First, it is likely that additional disease outcomes are influenced by a drinking pattern that includes episodes of heavy drinking. However, there is still relatively little focus on drinking patterns in medical epidemiological research to date, and many potential links have not yet been explored. For many chronic disease outcomes, no research has been done yet to examine the impact of other dimensions of alcohol consumption besides average volume. In addition, although there are now studies in which drinking patterns were explored, no standardised measure of drinking pattern has been adopted, thus making comparisons and pooling of studies difficult [31].
