Alcohol Abuse Identified By A Single Question



Posted: Monday, March 16, 2009

by Natalie Donnelly
Well Heeled Women

A single-screening question that was recommended by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) was found as being very accurate in establishing if primary-care patients abused alcohol, reported researchers at Boston Medical Center. Current methods to screen patients are very time consuming, comprising a questionnaire having multiple questions, resulting in many patients not being screened.

The simpler single question approach by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism asks patients simply how many drinks they had in a day over the past year. For men the question was how many times had they drank 5 or more alcoholic drinks per day over the past 12 month's. The same question for women is asked but the level is 4 or more alcoholic drinks per day.

Researchers at Boston Medical Center were attempting to establish the validity of the single-screening question that was recommended by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The researchers used a sample of 286 patients of which 12 percent had a current alcohol related health problems, 6 percent consumed dangerous levels of alcohol but did not have any health related problems, 13 percent drank dangerous amounts of alcohol and had previous health related problems but none currently. A further 31 percent of the 286 patients sampled drank unhealthy levels of alcohol.

Lead author of the research Peter Smith, MD, attending physician in the section of General Internal Medicine at Boston Medical Center stated that "

The single-question screening recommended by the NIAAA appears to have favorable characteristics," and that the success of the research could result in the single-screening question being used as a better alternative to the current multiple questionnaire currently used, "Single-question screening tests for unhealthy alcohol use may help to increase the frequency of screening in primary-care."

The Boston Medical Center researchers also stated that the easier screening of patients using the single-screening question and identifying those patients with unhealthy alcohol consumption levels. To enable support be given to them to reduce their level of drinking prior to it becoming a health problem.

In the USA alone, it is estimated that 14 million adults are classified as being chronic heavy drinkers. Recent studies have shown that alcohol has contributed to as much as 25% of all workplace accidents.

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