A Quick Screen For Risky Drinking by a Teen

We are always looking for quick and effective ways to elicit information about risk-taking behaviors in our teen patients so we can identify a potential problem before it becomes more serious. This month, Chung et al. (doi: 10.1542/peds.2011-1828) share with us the results of a study in which three questions involving alcohol consumption were used as a brief empirically-validated alcohol screen, one of which turns out to be highly sensitive and specific when it comes to identifying moderate to high risk teen drinkers. The fact that one question can be so sensitive and specific is quite sobering and yet must pique your curiosity so that you will want to link to this early release article and learn more about adding this question to your health maintenance history taking — if you haven’t already done so.