Hazardous alcohol use is a key behaviour risk factor that affects health. Routine alcohol screening for adults is recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to help prevent alcohol-use disorders. NICE recommends using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT), a screening questionnaire. General practitioners should be carrying out alcohol screening as an integral part of their practice. Little is known about how many patients are screened and whether alcohol use is being recorded accurately in general practice. In this study we will use data from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD), a database of routinely collected medical record data from general practitioners in the UK, to find out how many patients had a record of alcohol use, and whether they were screened using a recommended questionnaire. We will look at how the recording of alcohol use varies in different patient groups, such as those with particular health problems. This will show to what extent recommendations for alcohol screening are followed, and whether particular patient groups are more likely to be screened than others. This will help to guide researchers using alcohol data in future research.
Alcohol screening for adults is recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as an integral part of practice for the prevention of alcohol-use disorders. We will assess the utility of recorded alcohol data within the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) by assessing prevalence and accuracy of recording of alcohol. We will determine the prevalence of screening at different levels: alcohol screening using recommended screening tools (AUDIT or FAST), alcohol units per week, or other alcohol screening using morbidity codes. We will also investigate how prevalence of recording varies with patient characteristics. We will conduct a cross-sectional study, where the study population is all people aged 16 years or over who were registered in CPRD (up-to-standard) on the study date. The study date will be chosen to allow us to use the most recent data available in CPRD. We will then validate information gathered from morbidity codes and alcohol units per week, using scores from recommended screening tools as the gold standard. This study will provide insight into how well routine practice is aligned with NICE guidelines for alcohol screening, and help establish best practise in using CPRD data to investigate alcohol use in research.
Alcohol use recording:
- Alcohol screening using recommended tools (AUDIT and FAST)
- Alcohol units per week
- Other alcohol screening recorded using morbidity codes
Emily Herrett - Chief Investigator - London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine ( LSHTM )
Elizabeth Crellin - Corresponding Applicant - The Health Foundation
Elizabeth Crellin - Collaborator - The Health Foundation
Jennifer Quint - Collaborator - Imperial College London
Kathryn Mansfield - Collaborator - London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine ( LSHTM )
Liam Smeeth - Collaborator - London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine ( LSHTM )
Rachel Denholm - Collaborator - University of Bristol
Sarah Cook - Collaborator - London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine ( LSHTM )
Patient Level Index of Multiple Deprivation