Clinicians who treat patients of East Asian descent need to be aware of the risk of esophageal cancer from alcohol consumption in their ALDH2-deficient patients. Importantly, clinicians can determine whether an individual of East Asian descent is ALDH2 deficient simply by asking whether they have experienced the alcohol flushing response. In the Japanese population, ALDH2 deficiency can be identified accurately based on the answers to a flushing questionnaire consisting of two questions (see Box 1) about previous episodes of facial flushing after drinking alcohol [25]. The two questions can be easily included as part of a standard clinical interview. In a Japanese male population, the flushing questionnaire had a 90% sensitivity and 88% specificity [25] and a positive predictive value of 87% (based on the tabulated data in [25]). The flushing questionnaire gave a similarly high sensitivity (88%) and specificity (92%) when administered to Japanese women [29].
