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Addiction patients in emergency departments are common assignments from the rescue services. Often there are recurring images of the same patient. Patients with acute intoxications are passed from the emergency services in different constitution to the emergency department. The challenge to the treating emergency team and the infrastructure is correspondingly high. Nevertheless, the emergency treatment should include a comprehensive initial somatic and later psychosomatic treatment regim in these patients, this treatment option should always be offered and discussed again and again. Furthermore patients who are admitted to the hospital on emergency wards because of general medical or surgical problems, have in up to 10 % of cases a problematic behaviour with respect to their alcohol consumption, but are "compensated" at the time of entry. It is thus appropriate for all emergency patients who need to be hospitalized to perform a screening for a problematic alcohol consumption. there are appropriate questionnaires that take little time and can also be performed on emergency rooms, but you have to remember!

The multimedia era is fascinating and limitless! The advances in the field of consumer and entertainment electronics are impressive. Our private as well as business life is very much accompanied and influenced by numerous technical gadgets. These advancements should have many positive implications on our clinical work. Do they? Using modern personal computers and clinic information systems (CIS) the access to patients' data, the prescription of drugs, or x-ray diagnostics on high-resolution laptop screens became as easy as pie. This affects the doctor-patient relationship but also the communication between physicians and nurses. Computers also affect our daily clinical work and therefore the treatment of our patients. Do our patients take benefit from these technical achievements? Does the use of clinic information systems positively influence diagnosis, treatment and finally patient outcome but also doctors' performances? What has really changed in the last couples of years? The present article tries to critically review these major changes in patient care.