Study: Drugs Contribute to Hospital Visits

Emergency room visits in Britain are increased by illegal drug use, new research shows.

A week of surveying patients and doctors at a London hospital found nearly 10 percent had used drugs within 24 hours of their visit.

Doctors said they attributed drug use to be directly or indirectly related to the emergency care visits in less than 7 percent of patients.

The study was published in Emergency Medicine Journal.

It estimates a million visits a year to emergency rooms can be attributed to drug use and 400,000 hospital admissions in Britain.

Of the patients surveyed, more than 36 percent admitted to using drugs in their lifetime, 16 percent in the previous month and nearly 10 percent within the past day.

British Crime Survey statistics showed overall citizen drug use at a lower percentage than that, which leads researchers to conclude drug use leads to emergency room visits.