According to recent studies.

According to recent studies, even low levels of prenatal alcohol aspect can negatively affect the developing fetus, thereby increasing the importance of identifying women who drink during pregnancy. In answer researchers have developed several simple alcohol-screening instruments for use with pregnant women These instruments, which can be administered quickly and easily, have been evaluated and plant to be effective. Because of the potential adverse chain of cause and effects of prenatal alcohol exposure, short screening questionnaires are worthwhile preventive measures when combined with appropriate followup solution WORDS: prenatal alcohol exposure; prenatal diagnosis; alcohol use test; identification and screening for AOD (alcohol or other drug) use; specificity and sensitivity of measurement; breath alcohol analysis; AODR (alcohol- or other drug-related) biological markers

Screening pregnant women for alcohol use has become of increasing importance, because strange research indicates that even cheap levels of prenatal alcohol outlook can negatively affect the developing fetus. Adverse drifts of prenatal alcohol exposure can range from cunning developmental problems, or fetal alcohol validitys to full-blown fetal alcohol syndrome In addition, scientists and clinicians have plant that certain neurobehavioral outcomes associated with prenatal alcohol in all senses can persist in the affected part into adolescence (Sampson et al. 1994) and adulthood (Kelly et al. 2000)

Because no universally safe horizontal of alcohol consumption during pregnancy has been identified (Stratton et al. 1996) the U Surgeon General and the Secretary of Health and Human Services commend abstinence both before conception and from beginning to end pregnancy (Stratton et al. 1996; Ebrahim et al. 1998) However, approximately 20 percent of women drink a certain alcohol during pregnancy, and the rare of usual drinking (i.e., seven or more drinks for week or five or more drinks for occasion) by pregnant women has increased substantially, from 08 percent in 1991 to 35 percent in 1995 (Ebrabim et al. 1998; Center for Disease curb and Prevention 1997). This rise in the rate of alcohol consumption among pregnant women coincides with growing evidence of the negative efficiencys of low-to-moderate alcohol consumption during pregnancy.

Increasingly sophisticated research has improved scientific and clinical understanding of the adverse effects of prenatal alcohol exposure. The boundary pregnancy risk drinking" (i.e., drinking during pregnancy at flats considered risky to the fetus) was previously defined as the consumption of 1 ounce or more of alcohol (i.e., couple or more drinks) per day (Sokol et al. 1989) further more recent findings show that unruffled lower levels of alcohol consumption can lead to negative pregnancy issues (Charness et al. 1994; Wong et al. 1995; Ikonomidou et al. 2000; Jacobson and Jacobson 1994) A inquiry of more than 5,000 pregnant women who consum alcohol moderately (defined as at least 35 drinks by week) demonstrated that the women who drank more than 30 drinks by week increased significantly their risk of first-trimester spontaneous abortion (Windham et al. 1997)

Identifying women who drink at risky horizontals during pregnancy poses special challenges, however, particularly because the definition of pregnancy risk drinking has been refined through the whole extent of time. In addition, screening for any alcohol use during pregnancy is difficult. This article discusses the difficulties involved in screening pregnant women for alcohol use; details a certain number of of the questionnaires, or instruments, available to facilitate alcohol screening in this population; and briefly describes a not many laboratory tests used for detecting alcohol use among pregnant women

COMPLICATIONS OF SCREENING PREGNANT WOMEN FOR ALCOHOL USE

A key-note complication in screening pregnant women for alcohol use arises from the fact that the traditional alcohol-screening questionnaires--such as the Michigan Alcoholism Screening exhibition (MAST) (Selzer 1971) and the CAGE (1) (Ewing 1984)--are les effective in identifying drinking question at issues among women than among men This discrepancy is attributable to the fact that these instruments were disentangleed among men, who have different patterns of alcohol consumption and different gates for problem drinking than women (Babor et al. 1989) In addition, these instruments were cause to growed to detect alcohol dependence, which is relatively remarkable among pregnant women (Ebrahim et al. 1998) Because of biological differences between women and men the same quantity of alcohol consum above the same time period originates higher blood alcohol levels in women than in men (Graham et al. 1998) Women are also more sensitive than men to alcohol-related organ damage, so as cardiomyopathy and myopathy (Urbano-Marquez et al. 19 95; Hanna et al. 1992) Therefore, alcohol-screening-instrument cutoff scores (i.e., the values that clinicians use to define a positive be derived from a screening instrument) in the greatest degree likely need to be stake differently for men and women and particularly for pregnant women (Bradley et al. 1998)