Background: Prevalence of alcohol use disorder (AUD) on inpatient medicine wards exceeds 40%. Only 50% of these patients develop alcohol withdrawal, of whom only 5-20% develop complicated alcohol withdrawal syndromes (AWS) that warrant treatment and monitoring. Overutilization of the Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment of Alcohol Scale, Revised (CIWA-Ar) scale is well-reported in the literature. CIWA-Ar [...]

Background: Guidelines recommend symptom triggered therapy for management of alcohol withdrawal. The most commonly use assessment scale is the Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment, Revised (CIWA-Ar). CIWA-Ar has been criticized however for relying on patient self-report, and alternative scales have been developed that incorporate vital signs to be more objective, including the Minnesota Detoxification Scale (MINDS) [...]