WEDNESDAY, July 23 (HealthDay News) -- Alcohol use disorders (AUDs) are frequently overlooked in patients undergoing surgery, say German researchers who studied 1,556 surgical patients.

"First, we noted that AUD is not diagnosed adequately during preoperative assessment. Then, even if a finding of AUD was made before surgery, preventive measures were not often undertaken. This is significant, because patients with AUD have three to four times more complications during and around the time of surgery than patients without AUD," study author Dr. Claudia D. Spies said in a news release issued by the American Society of Anesthesiologists.

When AUD is properly identified, doctors can begin intervention strategies.

Spies and colleagues found that most doctors didn't use well-documented tools for AUD detections, perhaps because the doctors were uncomfortable asking patients about their alcohol consumption.

"Physicians tend to underestimate and miss AUD in younger patients, especially young female patients," Spies said. "Our results emphasize that the use of computer-based screening methods ... applied to every patient, are effective in addressing these biases."

The researchers found that when a computerized self-assessment tool called AUDIT (Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test) was used, more than twice as many patients with AUD were identified compared to when doctors used the standard preoperative interview.

This may be due to the fact that many doctors lack training in preoperative screening for alcohol use and that patients prefer the more anonymous nature of the computerized self-test.

"Patients seem to be more confident in answering questions about their alcohol use in a computer-based question-and-answer format," Spies said.

The study was published in the current issue of Anesthesiology.

More information

The American Psychological Association has more about alcohol use disorders  .

FRIDAY June 27 (HealthDay News) -- Drugs that contain compounds called cannabinoids from the marijuana plant don't increase the risk of serious side effects but are associated with an increase in some non-serious side effects, Canadian scientists report.

The researchers at McGill University in Montreal and the University of British Columbia (UBC) examined adverse events reported in 31 clinical studies of cannabinoid medications conducted between 1966 and 2007.

The adverse events were grouped as serious or non-serious. Serious adverse events included those that led to hospitalization, disability or death. Non-serious adverse events included dizziness and drowsiness.

"Overall, we found an 86 percent increase in the rate of non-serious adverse events among the patients treated with cannabinoids compared to the patients in the control groups," Dr. Mark Ware, a neurosciences researcher at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, said in a prepared statement.

Most of the non-serious side effects were mild to moderate in severity.

The study was published in the June 16 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Cannabinoids have been shown to help treat chronic pain from diseases such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, arthritis and fibromyalgia. The drugs also stimulate appetite and relieve nausea, according to background information in the study.

Doctors must balance the benefits of these drugs against possible side effects, the researchers said.

"We have summarized the adverse events from these studies to help educate physicians and patients about the possible risks of medical cannabinoids. We cannot extend these results to smoked cannabis or recreational use. That will require further research," Dr. Jean-Paul Collet, senior researcher at the Child & Family Research Institute and director of the Centre for Applied Health Research and Evaluation at British Columbia Children's Hospital, said in a prepared statement.

More information

The National Pain Foundation has more about cannabinoids  .

TUESDAY, June 3 (HealthDay News) -- Having recent trauma survivors relive the troubling event in a controlled environment may help prevent them from developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to a new report.

This exposure-based therapy approach is not new, but clinicians sometime avoid using it under the belief it distresses the survivors too much, according to background information for the report, published in the June issue of Archives of General Psychiatry. Instead, they tend to favor cognitive restructuring, which focuses on changing thoughts and responses to a traumatic event.

In an Australian study, 90 patients who developed acute stress disorder after a non-sexual assault or motor vehicle crash were randomly assigned to five weekly 90-minute sessions of exposure therapy or cognitive restructuring, or they were wait-listed for treatment.

After completing treatment, fewer patients who received exposure therapy met criteria for PTSD than those in the cognitive restructuring group (33 percent vs. 63 percent) or the wait-list group (77 percent). The ratio for exposure therapy versus cognitive restructuring held fairly closely in a follow-up exam done six months later; however, 47 percent of the patients getting exposure therapy had achieved full remission, while only 13 percent of those in the cognitive restructuring group did.

Despite some concerns that patients may not be able to manage the distress elicited by prolonged exposure, there was no difference in drop-out rates for the prolonged exposure and cognitive restructuring groups (17 percent vs. 23 percent), the authors wrote. In addition, by the end of three sessions, the distress ratings were significantly lower in the exposure therapy group than in the cognitive restructuring group.

Exposure therapy may be more effective than cognitive restructuring, because it eases the anxiety associated with the traumatic memory and corrects the belief that the memory must be avoided, in addition to encouraging self-control, the authors noted.

The current findings suggest that direct activation of trauma memories is particularly useful for prevention of PTSD symptoms in patients with acute stress disorder, the authors concluded. Exposure should be used in early intervention for people who are at high risk for developing PTSD.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health has more about post-traumatic stress disorder.