Introduction. Alcohol abuse is one of the urgent problems of the world community in general and Russia in particular. Alcohol makes a significant contribution to the high mortality of Russians. The problem of alcohol abuse in rural areas is particularly relevant, which is aggravated by the low appeal of the population to narcologists, which leads to a low detection of narcological pathology among patients. Purpose: to study the prevalence of narcological disorders associated with alcohol consumption among patients undergoing inpatient treatment in rural areas. Materials and methods. The Koshkinsky rural municipal district of the Samara region was chosen as the base territory of the study – one of the typical rural areas with a population of 21.4 thousand people. 357 patients were examined who were treated in the inpatient conditions of the Koshkinskaya CRH in two inpatient departments – therapeutic and surgical. The study was conducted in 2022-2023 according to the data on the appeal of patients to narcological medical organizations during their lifetime with problems related to alcohol use (clinical and anamnestic method), as well as according to the diagnosis of alcohol-associated diseases (AAS) using the registered computer program "Early diagnosis of alcohol and narcotic substances". Analytical and statistical research methods were used. The results were processed using the SPSS statistical package (version 22). Results and discussion. Of the 357 patients, men accounted for 162 (45.4%), women, respectively, – 195 (54.6%). The average age of patients was 58.1±0.8 years. The proportion of patients in a rural hospital with a diagnosis of alcohol-related narcological disorder established by a narcologist as a whole among patients was 8.1% [95% CI: 5.3-10.9%]. Of this group, 58.6% were observed with alcohol dependence syndrome, 31.0% – with harmful alcohol consumption, 10.4% – with the combined use of several psychoactive substances. When using the computer program "Early diagnosis of alcohol and narcotic substances", signs of alcohol-associated diseases were detected in 17.1% [95%CI: 13.2–21.0%] of all patients, and the proportion of such patients in surgical (16.8%) and therapeutic (17.2%) departments did not differ significantly. In persons with an established diagnosis of narcological disease according to the AAZ scale of the Computer program, the average score was 10.7 ± 1.5; in persons who did not have a history of narcological disease and did not consult a narcologist, 1.6 ± 0.1 points. Conclusions. The prevalence of signs of narcological diseases associated with alcohol consumption in rural hospital patients was: according to anamnestic data – 8.1%, while according to the diagnosis of alcohol-associated diseases using a computer program, it is significantly higher - 17.1%, which indicates a high latency of these diseases in the rural population. A statistically significant difference in the value of the average score of the AAP diagnostic scale in rural hospital patients of different sexes was established (the average score in men (3.2 ±0.4) is higher than in women (1.6± 0.3). The revealed statistically significant difference in the average score on the AAP diagnostic scale in patients with a drug history (10.7±1.5) and patients who did not consult a narcologist (1.6±0.1) indicates the effectiveness of the program "Early diagnosis of alcohol and narcotic substances" as a diagnostic tool for alcohol-associated diseases and a tool for measuring the prevalence of alcoholic problems of rural patients, which is especially important with their low access to drug treatment.