Ethanol-induced ketoacidosis as a possible neglected cause of sudden death in chronic alcohol consumers.

Abstract

Unlabelled: Alcohol accounts for a great amount of deaths per year either due to the acute intoxication or due to the secondary impacts of acute or chronic alcoholism. Commonly, in large amount of such fatal cases blood alcohol concentration is low or absent and fatty liver disease is frequently the only pathological finding detected at the autopsy of alcohol consumer. We offer a short case report of a case with the following analysis of why we decided to consider alcoholic ketoacidosis in our differential diagnosis.

Keywords: metabolic disturbance - alcoholic ketoacidosis - chronic alcoholism - sudden death.