The authors thank Dr Proulx and her colleagues for their comments on and critiques of our article.1  We acknowledge that not all information is readily available for interpretation, as this has been correctly attributed to the study’s retrospective nature. Had this study been prospective, a more robust characterization of the included patients could have been obtained; however, the study is limited to what information was contributed to the electronic medical record.

Specifically, in regard to the incidence of severe alcohol withdrawal, we are not aware of a consensus definition with objective diagnostic criteria for severe alcohol withdrawal versus nonsevere withdrawal. We are aware of some recommendations to use revised Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment of Alcohol (CIWA-Ar) scores above a certain threshold to indicate severe withdrawal; however, patients who received phenobarbital were not monitored with a CIWA-Ar scale, thus limiting the value of this metric. As for complications in the...

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