The FAST questionnaire

Extract

The Fast Alcohol Screening Test (FAST) is a four-item questionnaire, which was developed by Hodgson et al. [1] from the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and was first published in 2002. It is based on responses from >3000 patients after the questionnaire was distributed by 100 nurses in several different busy medical settings. It is used to assess alcohol misuse through routine screening but on its own is not diagnostic. It can, however, be used to introduce a brief intervention in hazardous drinkers. Hazardous drinking can be defined as a pattern of drinking that is associated with a high risk of psychosocial or physical problems in the future. The AUDIT questionnaire is well recognized as a reliable screening instrument [2–4], but the FAST can be completed in a much shorter time (12.5 seconds versus 78 seconds) [5] and is therefore suitable for screening very large populations in a cost-effective way.