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Letter
Screening for alcohol misuse
  1. J Huntley1,
  2. C Blain1,
  3. R Touquet1
  1. 1Accident and Emergency Department, St Mary's Hospital, Praed Street, London W2 INY, UK
  1. Correspondence to:
 Mr R Touquet

https://doi.org/10.1136/emj.19.2.185-a

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    The Paddington Alcohol Test (PAT) confers considerable advantage over the CAGE as the accident and emergency (A&E) screen for alcohol misuse.

    Hadida et al's commendable study1 identified 28% (out of 413) A&E attendees as having an alcohol related problem. A pilot study using the CAGE, run in our department a decade ago,2 had a very low pick up rate, which was one of the reasons behind the development of the PAT. Our recent study,3 using the PAT, had an overall detection rate of 6.4% rising to 9.8% in the third month after intensive audit and feedback.

    Four features could explain the discrepancy:

    1. in the PAT study only 61.1% of patients had presenting complaints mandating the test. The detection rate for this group (in month 3) was 14.3%.

    2. in this group, 62 patients (of 286) were missed—that is, did not have the test …

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