Assessment of the usefulness of phosphatidylethanol (PEth) measurements to detect alcohol consumption in Emergency Department patients who are being treated for suspected alcohol-related injury.

This project is a single-arm non-interventional quantitative study to investigate the clinical utility of PEth as a sensitive marker for alcohol consumption. The study will be conducted at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital (SCGH), Nedlands, and will survey the ED population for a period of 12 months. All subjects who present to the ED and have a serum alcohol test requested by the clinician between January 2023 and January 2024 will be considered for inclusion in the study. The study consists of a single timepoint with no participant follow-up. Subjects who present to the ED and have a serum alcohol test requested by a treating clinician will be considered for inclusion in the study. The study will involve the secondary use of routinely collected blood samples that have completed their clinical purposes and are in storage, awaiting disposal. The clinical study is a single time-point (snapshot) experiment, using single specimens taken from patients, where patients will not be contacted, and their treatment will not be affected by the outcome of the research.