Screening in primary care settings for illicit drug use: assessment of screening instruments : a supplemental evidence update for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force

"Two approaches have been proposed for identifying illicit drug use and drug abuse among patients seen in routine clinical encounters: toxicologic tests of blood or urine, and standardized screening questionnaires. This report focuses only on the second approach. To be of benefit in primary care settings, a standardized screening instrument must not only be accurate and reliable in detecting patients with a potential problem: it must also be short and easy to administer so that an undue burden is not placed on the patient or practice staff when it is applied in the busy practice setting. The goals of this review were (1) to identify standardized instruments described in the medical literature that have been designed for detecting use/abuse of illicit drugs; (2) to select those instruments reasonably short enough to have the potential for routine use in a busy primary care practice setting; (3) to determine the extent of published evidence about the accuracy (sensitivity and specificity) and the reliability of potentially useful instruments, and rate the quality of that evidence; and (4) to determine the extent to which validated instruments have been assessed for feasibility and utility when applied in primary care practice settings and among various patient populations."

"Screening in primary care settings for illicit drug use: assessment of screening instruments : a supplemental evidence update for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force"