Dick Sprague, a Colorado LifeRinger, forwards an interesting article that deals with predicting relapse. The academic article stems from the distressing fact that more than one-third of liver transplant recipients — most of whom, presumably, need the transplant because of damage from drinking — relapse after the transplant. Pause and think about that — you’ve damaged your liver to the point where it’s function is so compromised that you need a transplant. You convince the doctors that you won’t waste their time, energy and money by resuming drinking; you go through the wait for a donor liver and the trauma of the surgery and recovery … and then you go back to drinking. What an example of the power of addiction!
The article (actually the abstract of the article) offers a list of nine factors that predict the risk of relapse, and most of them certainly don’t just apply to transplant recipients:
Nine of 25 hypothesized risk factors were predictive of alcohol relapse after liver transplant: absence of hepatocellular carcinoma, tobacco dependence, continued alcohol use after liver disease diagnosis, low motivation for alcohol treatment, poor stress management skills, no rehabilitation relationship, limited social support, lack of nonmedical behavioral consequences, and continued engagement in social activities with alcohol present.
Read the abstract Here.
— Craig Whalley
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