Alcoholics may be more injury prone than illicit ...( Considerable research has linked a...),Health

• Considerable research has linked alcohol and drug use to both major and minor trauma.
• Most studies have used emergency-department admissions data to establish this relationship.
• A new study looks at patients entering detoxification for alcohol and other drug dependence.
• People with alcohol problems seem more injury prone than people who use illicit drugs.

Numerous publications have documented the association between alcohol and drug use - particularly alcohol use - and motor vehicle crashes, pedestrian and bicycle injuries, falls, burns, drownings, suicides, assaults, domestic violence, and even murder. Most studies have examined the association between alcohol consumption and injury using hospital emergency-department admissions data. A study in the February issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research reconsiders the issue in a different clinical setting, among patients entering detoxification for alcohol and other drug dependence. The findings indicate that injury is a serious problem for a substantial proportion of patients undergoing detoxification, particularly those with alcohol dependence.

"Our hypothesis was simply that when it comes to substance abuse, the consequences vary for each substance and for the group of users," explained Jeffrey H. Samet, associate professor of medicine and public health at Boston University, and the study's senior author. "What the substance is may be an important factor in the outcomes of the user. In particular, in the case of injury, we hypothesized that alcohol use is more of a risk factor for injury than illicit drug use. Furthermore, we hypothesized that this was the case amongst the most severely affected substance abusers, those receiving care in a detoxification unit."

The authors recruited 470 patients (360 males, 110 females) from a Boston detoxification unit. Study participants were divided into three groups: those considered alco
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14-Feb-2002