A prospective twelve-year follow-up of alcoholic women: A prognostic scale for long-term outcome

The clinical evaluation of prognosis in alcoholic women has become an important research priority due to the recent increase in the prevalence of alcohol abuse by women. The search for predictors of outcome in alcoholism has generated extensive literature, but few data are available about alcoholic women. The purpose of the present study was to examine the long-term course of alcoholism in women who were systematically interviewed and diagnosed according to rigorous criteria at index and to identify pre-treatment characteristics associated with various outcomes twelve years after hospitalization. In this paper we describe the first multivariate scale to predict prognosis in alcoholic women.