“Alcoholic patients overlap among different typological classification schemes”

Oral presentation in the 11th Congress of the European Society for Biomedical Research on Alcoholism. ESBRA 2007, 25 September, 2007 / Berlin.

Samuel Pombo

Aims:This study aims to assess patients classification concordance among six different alcoholic typological models: Cloninger´s Type I/II Von Knorring, Sullivan and Gilligan operationalized criteria; Babor Type A/B; NETER Alcoholic Typology and Lesch Subtypes.
Methods:A sample of 318 alcohol-dependent patients recruited in the alcoholism unit (NETER) of the Psychiatric Service of Santa Maria University Hospital in Lisbon (Portugal) was eligible for study entry. All subjects were evaluated during the outpatient therapeutical programme for operacionalized criteria, reported by each alcoholism typology.
Results:Regarding concordance agreement (kappa values) for the three type I/II classifications, Von Knorring vs. Sullivan yielded the higher rate of agreement, followed by Von Knorring vs. Gilligan and Gilligan vs. Sullivan criteria. Chi-square comparisons showed a significant overlap between Babor type A and Cloninger type I of Von Knorring (72.7% concordance) and Sullivan (74.4%). Over-two type classifications showed the following significant positive relations: Lesch type I vs. NETER heredopathic subtype (.20); Lesch type II vs. NETER anxiopathic subtype (.40) and Babor type A (.26); Lesch type III vs. NETER tymopathic subtype (.58); Lesch type IV vs. Cloninger type II of Von Knorring (.18) and Sullivan (.20) criteria and NETER addictopathic subtype vs. Cloninger type II of Von Knorring (.18), Sullivan (.18) and Gilligan (.17) criteria.
Conclusions:Like in other studies it was verified a low level of agreement between the proposed methods for identifying Cloninger’s type I/II alcoholics. We also observed a significantly overlap between type I and type A patients and anxiety and depression classification criteria methods.