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Does a blood alcohol level of 0.15 or more identify accurately problem drinkers in a drink‐driver population?
Author(s) -
Gijsbers Alan J,
Raymond Anne,
Whelan Greg
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
medical journal of australia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.904
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1326-5377
pISSN - 0025-729X
DOI - 10.5694/j.1326-5377.1991.tb121173.x
Subject(s) - alcohol , medicine , blood alcohol , apprehension , population , injury prevention , demography , poison control , environmental health , psychology , chemistry , biochemistry , sociology , cognitive psychology
Objective To determine whether a blood alcohol concentration (SAC) of 0.15 or more identifies accurately problem drinking in an apprehended drinking driver. Design Cross‐sectional analytic study of 86 drink drivers (“diagnostic test study”). Setting St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, drink‐driver education programme. Subjects Men aged between 18‐25 years, applying for relicensing after disqualification, who were participants at 10 consecutive drink‐driver education courses conducted in early 1987. Outcome measures Self‐reports of the amount of alcohol consumed and the amount of money spent on alcohol per week, the standard Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test (MAST) score and the blood alcohol level at apprehension. The first three measures were used as reference standards for alcohol related problems, against which the blood alcohol level was compared. Major results Scatter plots of SAC against amount consumed, amount spent and the MAST scores showed that a large proportion of the heaviest drinkers were not identified by the SAC. Log‐transformed correlation coefficients were: for amount spent v. amount consumed, r= 0.73; for MAST score v. amount consumed, r=0.52, and for MAST score v. amount spent r=0.53. Correlating the SAC with the log of the MAST score gave r = 0.21, SAC with log of the amount consumed, r=0.20, and SAC with log of the amount spent, r=0.15. Comparing a SAC of 0.15 or more with a MAST score of >5, we obtained a sensitivity of 0.36, a specificity of 0.76, a positive predictive value of 0.86, and a negative predictive value of 0.23. The prevalence of heavy drinking as measured by the MAST score was 0.80. Conclusion A blood alcohol concentration of 0.15 or more identifies only a third of the problem drinkers in this sample of drink drivers. Although it selected a group of drinkers with alcohol‐related problems, it missed most of the problem drinkers and did not reliably identify the heaviest drinkers.