Women and alcohol abuse in primary care. Identification and intervention.

Female problem drinkers are less likely than men to be identified in the primary care setting. The authors studied 24 adult women attending a general, internal medicine clinic to assess the efficiency of self-reports of alcohol consumption when compared with physician identification and other measures and the impact of a brief intervention on alcohol consumption. Despite the high rate of lifetime (79%) and current (67%) alcohol diagnoses, no patient was in alcohol treatment. Physician identification of alcohol problems was least sensitive but most specific, when compared with other measures. Brief intervention, as offered in this study, did not appear to modify alcohol consumption.