Toronto doctor’s iPhone app diagnoses severity of alcohol withdrawal

App distinguishes between real tremors and mimicked ones, helping doctors weed out people who try to obtain drugs by faking symptoms.

It never receives as much attention as shootings, car crashes, or even other drugs. But alcohol is a major burden on hospitals, accounting for 30 per cent of emergency room traffic by some estimates. (One British study linked alcohol to 70 per cent of peak-hour visits.)

ER doctors regularly deal with patients who go into alcohol withdrawal, which unlike narcotic withdrawal can actually be life-threatening. Some symptoms, like headaches and anxiety, are very subjective, but tremors are an important indicator of withdrawal severity because they can be judged by a clinician.

But even tremors aren’t always reliable, says Bjug Borgundvaag, an ER physician at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.

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