Alcohol Screening and Brief Advice in NHS General Dental Practices: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Feasibility Trial

Abstract

Aim: To assess the feasibility and acceptability of screening for alcohol misuse and delivering brief advice to eligible patients attending NHS general dental practices in London. Methods: A two-arm cluster randomised controlled feasibility trial was conducted. Twelve dental practices were recruited and randomised to intervention and control arms. Participants attending for a dental check were recruited into the study and were eligible if they consumed alcohol above recommended levels assessed by the AUDIT-C screening tool. All eligible participants were asked to complete a short baseline socio-demographic questionnaire. Six months after the completion of baseline measures, all participants were contacted via telephone by a researcher masked to their participant's allocation status. The full AUDIT tool was then administered. Alcohol consumption in the last 90 days was also assessed using the Form 90. A process evaluation assessed the acceptability of the intervention and study procedures. Results: Over a 7-month period, 229 participants were recruited (95.4% recruitment rate) and at the 6 months follow-up, 176 participants were assessed (76.9% retention rate). At the 6 months follow-up, participants in the intervention arm were significantly more likely to report a longer abstinence period (3.2 vs. 2.3 weeks respectively, p=0.04) and non-significant differences in AUDIT (44.9% vs. 59.8% AUDIT positive respectively, p=0.053) and AUDIT C difference between baseline and follow-up (-0.67 units vs-0.29 units respectively, p=0.058) scores. Results from the process evaluation indicated that the intervention and study procedures were acceptable to dentists both dental professionals and patients. Conclusions: This study has demonstrated the feasibility and acceptability of NHS dentists screening for alcohol misuse and providing brief advice.

The Alcohol Harm Paradox in Periodontitis

“…Given that the prevalence of heavy drinking is often lower among those marginalized, the impact of alcohol policies on health inequality is limited. Additionally, considering the complexities of implementing public health policies, alcohol-related brief advice is a feasible intervention that dental professionals can deliver, aiming to increase the abstaining period (Ntouva et al 2019). Thus, based on our findings, alcohol control programs must target those socioeconomically disadvantaged and must be accompanied by upstream policy measures that address the root causes of socioeconomic inequalities.…”

Peer‐led alcohol intervention for college students: A pilot randomized controlled trial

“…Due to the exploratory nature of the study, the main objective was to identify the preliminary efficacy and feasibility of the implementation process (Lancaster et al, 2004). This is in line with similar studies (Ntouva et al, 2019;Ruiz-Zaldibar et al, 2021). Nevertheless, according to Ruiz-Zaldibar et al (2021), we determined that a minimum of 30 participants were necessary to obtain an estimate of the intervention's effect size.…”