Talk to the Veterans Crisis Line now
U.S. flag
An official website of the United States government
Veterans Benefits and Health Care About VA Find a VA Location

VA Health Systems Research

Go to the VA ORD website
Go to the QUERI website

HSR Citation Abstract

Search | Search by Center | Search by Source | Keywords in Title

"But I didn't drink!": What to do with discordant phosphatidylethanol results.

Winder GS, Clifton EG, Denysenko L, DiChiara AM, Hathaway D, Perumalswami PV, Shenoy A, Suzuki J, Tareen K, Mellinger JL, Fernandez AC. "But I didn't drink!": What to do with discordant phosphatidylethanol results. Liver transplantation : official publication of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society. 2024 Feb 1; 30(2):213-222.

Dimensions for VA is a web-based tool available to VA staff that enables detailed searches of published research and research projects.

If you have VA-Intranet access, click here for more information vaww.hsrd.research.va.gov/dimensions/

VA staff not currently on the VA network can access Dimensions by registering for an account using their VA email address.    Search Dimensions for VA for this citation
* Don't have VA-internal network access or a VA email address? Try searching the free-to-the-public version of Dimensions


Abstract:

Liver transplantation (LT) teams must be adept at detecting, evaluating, and treating patients'' alcohol use, given its prominence among psychological and behavioral phenomena which cause and contribute to liver diseases. Phosphatidylethanol (PEth) is a highly useful alcohol biomarker increasingly recommended for routine use in hepatology and LT. PEth is unique among alcohol biomarkers because of its wide detection window, high sensitivity and specificity, and the correlation of its numerical value with different patterns of alcohol use. Alongside myriad clinical opportunities in hepatology and LT, PEth also confers numerous challenges: little guidance exists about its clinical use; fearing loss of LT access and the reactions of their clinicians and families, candidates and recipients are incentivized to conceal their alcohol use; and liver clinicians report lack of expertise diagnosing and treating substance-related challenges. Discordance between patient self-reported alcohol use and toxicology is yet another common and particularly difficult circumstance. This article discusses the general toxicological properties of PEth; explores possible scenarios of concordance and discordance among PEth results, patient history, and self-reported drinking; and provides detailed clinical communication strategies to explore discordance with liver patients, a key aspect of its use.




Questions about the HSR website? Email the Web Team

Any health information on this website is strictly for informational purposes and is not intended as medical advice. It should not be used to diagnose or treat any condition.
<--- --->