April 10, 2007 — Assessment of smoking status may help identify individuals at higher risk for alcohol misuse and serve as a reminder to conduct alcohol screening in the primary care setting, according to the results of a study reported in the April 9 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
"Screening for alcohol use in primary care settings is recommended by clinical care guidelines but is not adhered to as strongly as screening for smoking," write Sherry A. McKee, PhD, from the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, and colleagues. "It has been proposed that smoking status could be used to enhance the identification of alcohol misuse in primary care and other medical settings, but national data are lacking. Our objective was to investigate smoking status as a clinical indicator for alcohol misuse in a national sample of US adults, following clinical care guidelines for the assessment of these behaviors."
The investigators analyzed data from a sample of 42,374 US adults enrolled in the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (wave I, 2001 - 2002), and they determined odds ratios (ORs) and test characteristics of smoking behavior (daily, occasional, or former) for the detection of hazardous drinking behavior and alcohol-related diagnoses. Criteria for alcohol-related diagnoses were those of the Alcohol Use Disorder and Associated Disabilities Interview Schedule-IV.
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