Binge drinking on the rise

UCI Health family medicine physician recommends formal screenings, health history to diagnose alcohol use disorder

IN THE NEWS: The number of deaths from excessive alcohol consumption in the U.S. rose 29% between 2016 and 2021, according to the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Dr. Charles Vega, a family medicine physician at UCI Health, writes in Medscape about formally screening patients for problem drinking, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends screening for alcohol misuse among adults at least 18 years of age, with no specific interval for repeat screening … [specifically] the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test–Consumption (AUDIT-C) and Single Alcohol Screening Question (SASQ) ... followed up with a more extensive history to make the diagnosis of alcohol use disorder (AUD)."

Vega is also a professor of family medicine at UC Irvine School of Medicine and the director of the UC Irvine Program in Medical Education for the Latino Community (PRIME-LC) Family Medicine Residency. For more than 25 years, he has seen patients at the UCI Health Family Health Center ― Santa Ana, the largest and oldest federally qualified health center in Orange County.

His academic interests include access to quality care, compassionate medical care for underserved populations and developing training programs that promote this vision.

Read more

• Medscape: Alcohol: How much is too much? ›
• UC Irvine to study reducing alcohol-influenced crash injuries ›
• Universal screening for adverse childhood experiences can help reduce toxic stress effects, says UCI Health expert ›
• How to cope with anxiety ›