Are there tools to help providers assess patients for drug and alcohol use?
Experts in addiction medicine use a combination of behavioral and clinical testing to diagnose drug abuse. There are 9 commonly used drug-use screening tests: Addiction Severity Index (ASI), Alcohol Dependence Scale, Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), CAGE (see below), Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment for Alcohol, Revised (CIWA-Ar), Drinker Inventory of Consequences (DrInC), Michigan Alcohol Screening Test (MAST and SMAST), Problem Oriented Screening Instrument for Teenagers (POSIT), and Self-Administered Alcoholism Screening Test (SAAST) (American Society of Addiction Medicine, 1998). Six of them are specifically designed to detect alcohol use. Which screening tests are most useful in primary care practice? The CAGE test is a non-threatening quick screening test for detecting drug use in adults (see Table 13-4) and the POSIT test useful for screening adolescents aged 12-19. The questions below are designed to assess key substance-using behaviors. The letters in
