Our results should be interpreted in light of some limitations. First, our sample is predominantly male, so our results may not generalize to women. Secondly, one should note that AUDIT-C assesses drinking over the past year whereas PEth can only detect alcohol exposure only over approximately 3 weeks.44 As observed, despite reporting alcohol use ranging from lower risk to high risk drinking, some individuals self-reporting alcohol use had PEth <8 ng/mL in both the full sample and the sample restricted to the PEth time window. This may be a reflection of the difference in the timing between PEth measurement and AUDIT-C survey date, but may also be because PEth is not 100% sensitive, especially for drinking below cutoffs for excessive use.25 In the restricted sample, positive PEth results could not be attributed to alcohol use that occurred after AUDIT-C survey date. In these analyses, a similar proportion of patients with self-reported abstinence had positive PEth as in the full sample (15% vs. 12%) and this group also showed significantly increased risk of mortality, corroborating results from the full sample. Additionally,
