The majority of cases that come to autopsy with the label of alcoholic dementia prove simply to have the lesions of the Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. Traumatic lesions of varying degrees of severity are commonly added. Other cases show the lesions of Marchiafava-Bignami disease, hepatic encephalopathy, subdural hematomas, or an unrelated communicating hydrocephalus, Alzheimer disease, ischemic necrosis, or some other disease quite unrelated to alcoholism. Practically always in our material, the clinical state can be accounted for by one or a combination of these disease processes and there has been no need to invoke a hypothetical toxic effect of alcohol on the brain. This has also been the experience of Torvik and associates; with a few exceptions, such as coincidental Alzheimer disease, all their cases that had been diagnosed as having alcoholic dementia turned out, on neuropathologic examination, to have the chronic lesions of Wernicke-Korsakoff disease.
In brief, the most serious flaw in the concept of a primary alcoholic dementia is that it lacks a distinctive, well-defined pathology. Until such time as the morphologic basis is established, its status must remain ambiguous. A more detailed discussion of this subject and of so-called alcoholic cerebral atrophy can be found in the review by Victor (1994).
Alcoholic cerebral atrophy likewise does not constitute a well-defined entity. The concept was the product originally of pneumoencephalographic studies. Relatively young alcoholics, some with and some without symptoms of cerebral disease were often found to have enlarged cerebral ventricles and widened sulci, mainly of the frontal lobes (see, e.g., reports of Brewer and Perrett and of Haug). Similar findings have been reported in brain imaging studies of chronic alcoholics (see review by Carlen et al). The clinical correlates of these radiologic findings are unclear. Wilkinson demonstrated that in clinically normal alcoholics, the radiologic measures of “brain atrophy” were age related; once the age factor was removed, the imaging findings in these subjects did not differ significantly from those in nonalcoholic controls. However, from the studies by Harper and Blumbergs (1982) and Harper and Kril (1985) it may indeed be the case that chronic exposure to alcohol induces cerebral atrophy, but this requires confirmation. The idea of alcoholic atrophy is open to criticism mainly on the grounds that dilated ventricles have in fact been reversible to a considerable extent when abstinence is maintained (Carlen et al; Lishman; Zipursky et al; Schroth et al).
That parental alcoholism may have an adverse effect on the offspring has been a recurrent theme in medical writings. Probably the first allusion to such a relationship was that of Sullivan in 1899, who reported that the mortality among the children of drunken mothers was more than two times greater than that among children of nondrinking women of “similar stock.” This increased mortality was attributed by Sullivan and later by Haggard and Jellinek to postnatal influences such as poor nutrition and a chaotic home environment, rather than to the intrauterine effects of alcohol. The idea that maternal alcoholism could damage the fetus was generally rejected and relegated to the category of superstitions about alcoholism or the claims of temperance ideologues.