Effectiveness of brief interventions in primary health care settings to decrease alcohol consumption by adult non-dependent drinkers: a systematic review of systematic reviews

• Systematic reviews of brief primary interventions on excessive drinking are heterogeneous.
• Brief interventions are moderately effective to reduce excessive drinking prevalence.
• Effects of multiple 15-min intervention contacts persist for at least 6 months.

ObjectiveTo evaluate the effectiveness of brief interventions in the primary health care setting to decrease alcohol consumption in non-alcoholic adult drinkers.MethodSystematic review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomized clinical trials published in English and Spanish and indexed in EMBASE, MEDLINE (PubMed), Web of Science, Scopus, and The Cochrane Library, from their inception to January 2014. The quality of the studies was evaluated with the AMSTAR instrument.ResultsSeven studies, published from 1999 to 2011, were included in the review (six meta-analyses, one systematic review). These studies were heterogeneous in terms of design, type and length of interventions analyzed, participants, responsible professionals, and results. Five studies reported a moderate decrease in alcohol consumption and four showed a decrease in the number of participants who consumed alcohol above the established risk level.ConclusionBrief interventions have a moderate effect on reducing alcohol consumption among excessive drinkers or people who consume excessive amounts of alcohol and as a consequence these interventions increased the number of people drinking alcohol below established limits of risk. Brief interventions with multiple contacts or follow-up sessions are the most effective.