Many Patients with Alcohol Withdrawal in Intensive Care Don't Receive Thiamine

Guidelines recommend routine administration of thiamine in patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) with alcohol withdrawal because of concerns for nutritional depletion and risk for Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. When patients with alcohol use disorder are admitted to the ICU for other issues (e.g., sepsis, trauma), thiamine administration is not standard practice although there might be similar concerns. To examine how often clinicians give thiamine, investigators examined the records from a multicenter database of nearly 15,000 patients with alcohol use disorder who were admitted to ICUs with alcohol withdrawal, sepsis, diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), or traumatic brain injury. About two thirds of patients were admitted for alcohol wi…