title: [Life style intervention for patients with alcohol-related somatic problems].
abstract: Three patients suffered from somatic complaints related to excessive alcohol use. For the first patient, a 42-year-old man, the simple advice to quit drinking was enough for him to stop. A second patient, a 61-year-old woman, continued to deny drinking excessively despite several signs of excessive alcohol use. The third patient, a 45-year-old man, changed his drinking behaviour after receiving lifestyle intervention from the internist. All three patients needed a structural intervention to tackle the drinking problems in addition to medical treatment. The first lifestyle-intervention session takes 10 minutes and subsequent sessions take 5 minutes each. The intervention includes five elements: screening, placing on the agenda, inventory, making an appointment about change and reverting to the appointment about change. A trained nurse could also perform part of the intervention. Although lifestyle interventions seem to be expensive and time-consuming activities in the short-term, in the longer term they save time and money and lead to a satisfactory result for both the patient and physician.
authors.affiliation: Amsterdam Institute for Addiction Research, Overschiestraat 65, 1062 XD Amsterdam. emmen@aiar.nl
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Emmen
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wollersheim
authors.forename: L D
authors.initials: LD
authors.lastname: Elving
authors.forename: G M
authors.initials: GM
authors.lastname: Schippers
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bleijenberg
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000523:psychology; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000150:complications / Q000517:prevention & control; D001521:Behavior Therapy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D016896:Treatment Outcome