• J Am Board Fam Med · Jul 2019

    Identifying Problematic Substance Use in a National Sample of Adolescents Using Frequency Questions.

    • Laura J Chavez, Katharine A Bradley, Gwen T Lapham, Thomas M Wickizer, and Deena J Chisolm.
    • From the College of Public Health, Division of Health Services Management and Policy, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH (LJC, TMW, DJC); Nationwide Children's Hospital, Research Institute, Columbus (LJC, DJC); Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, Seattle, WA (KAB, GTL); College of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Ohio State University, Columbus (DJC). laura.chavez@nationwidechildrens.org.
    • J Am Board Fam Med. 2019 Jul 1; 32 (4): 550-558.

    BackgroundBrief substance use screening questions for tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, and other drugs need further validation in adolescents. In particular, optimal age-specific screening cut-points are not known, and no study has been large enough to evaluate screening questions for noncannabis illicit drug use.MethodsAdolescent respondents to an annual national household survey were included (2008 to 2014; n = 169,986). Days of tobacco use in the past month, and days of alcohol, cannabis, other illicit drug use in the past year, were assessed as brief screens for tobacco dependence and DSM-IV alcohol (AUD), cannabis (CUD), and other illicit drug use disorders (DUD). Areas under receiver operating characteristics curves (AUCs), sensitivity and specificity were estimated separately by age group (12-15-, 16-17-, and 18-20-year-olds) and cut-points that maximized combined values of sensitivity and specificity were considered optimal.ResultsThe prevalence of tobacco dependence, AUD, CUD, and DUD was 5.8%, 7.1%, 4.5%, and 2.0%, respectively. AUCs ranged 0.84 to 0.99. The optimal cut-points for screening for tobacco dependence and DUDs was the same for all age groups: ≥1 day. The optimal cut-points for alcohol and cannabis varied by age: ≥3 days for 12-15-year-olds and ≥12 days for older adolescents.ConclusionsBrief measures of past-year use, or past-month use for tobacco, accurately identified adolescents with problematic substance use. However, health systems should use age-specific screening cut-points for alcohol and cannabis to optimize screening performance.© Copyright 2019 by the American Board of Family Medicine.

      Pubmed     Free full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…