This pilot study showed no difference between surgical or medical management for recovery or improvement in patients with discogenic paresis. These results need confirmation by a randomized study.
Although a great deal of time and effort is spent in organizing after-care for alcoholics, its value and the indications for its most efficient use are still unclear. Its importance was emphasized by the Alcoholism Sub-committee of the World Health Organization,^ and this opinion has since been repeated by the great majority of writers. There seems to be general agreement on two points-energetic after-care is essential to prevent relapse, and socially unstable patients usually relapse despite all attemps to support them. There is abundant evidence to support the second proposition, but the first seems to rest mainly on clinical impressions. This paper describes the results obtained by an alcoholic unit which was opened at Exe Vale Hospital in 1964. Seventy-six male patients have been followed up for 1-2 J years after discharge, and an attempt has been made to relate the outcome in these cases both to generally accepted prognostic factoid and to after-care.The patients admitted to this unit were all suffering from alcohol dependance with loss of control; this had caused obvious physical effects-delirium tremens, peripheral neuritis or abnormal liver function-^in 30 cases.Obviously demented patients were not admitted, but no other form of selection •was practised, and the motives of many patients in accepting admission were most dubious.The great majority of alcoholics in Devon receive their initial treatment as in-patients, largely as a matter of convenience; the reasons for this policy have been discussed elsewhere,^ and will not be repeated here.
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