The United States Preventive Services Task Force wants all adults, including pregnant women, across the country to be tested for unhealthy alcohol use.
In a paper, the task force stated that adults who are found to drink more than the recommended limits must be given behavioral counseling to encourage them to reduce their alcohol consumption. For teens, however, the task force could not find enough evidence to recommend screening and counseling. The paper asks for further research on the topic.
Alcohol Use Screening
This is not the first time the USPSTF recommended doctors' intervention. Since 1996, the task force has made its position known, asking doctors to screen and briefly counsel adults who show signs of unhealthy alcohol use. In 1989, they also issued a recommendation, encouraging doctors to ask patients about their regular alcohol consumption.
However, despite the repeated recommendations, not a lot of doctors screen patients for unhealthy alcohol use during clinic visits.
"Yet implementation of screening and brief intervention still remains quite low," wrote Angela Bazzi and Richard Saitz of Boston University School of Public Health in the study published in the journal JAMA. "For example, in the United States, 1 in 6 patients reports having discussed alcohol with their physician; rates in Europe are similarly low."
For the study, the USPSTF commissioned the review of studies on the effectiveness of screening and behavioral counseling in the reduction of excessive drinking in adults. They found sufficient evidence to continue recommending that doctors intervene by screening patients and talking to them to convince them to drink less.
The task force added that numerous brief screening instruments can be used to detect unhealthy alcohol use in primary care settings.
Negative Effects Of Unhealthy Alcohol Use
An estimated 88,000 alcohol-attributed deaths are recorded in the United States every year. This includes injuries from vehicular accidents, liver disease, etc.
Pregnant women, meanwhile, put their children at risk of developing birth defects and developmental disabilities.
Unhealthy alcohol use means drinking beyond the recommended limits, which is no more than four drinks in a single day and about 14 drinks in a week for men ages 21 to 64. For women, the recommended limit is three drinks a day or no more than seven drinks in a week, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
