The efficacy of treatments in reducing alcohol consumption: a meta-analysis.

Meta-analysis was used to assess the relative efficacy of various treatments in reducing alcohol consumption over the short-term, 6 months, and 12 months. All the treatments were administered in well-controlled studies. In the short-term and 1-year follow-up studies, patients in the experimental group drank much less than the control group. However, between group consumption differences were negligible in the 6-month studies. When the studies were pooled, regardless of the follow-up assessment periods, the experimental group drank significantly less than the control group. These results suggest that, in general, patients who received experimental treatments consumed much less alcohol than patients in the control groups.