ER Patients’ Blood Alcohol Up 131 Percent
August 17, 2006
The incidence of emergency room patients in Northern Ireland with a blood alcohol level over the legal limit is up 113 percent in five years.
The annual number of alcohol tests — required to exclude certain forms of serious illness and for informed consent — rose at Belfast City Hospital from 825 to 2,031, an increase of 146 percent, according to the study published in Emergency Medicine Journal.
Most requiring a lab test for alcohol were aged 36 to 45, but the numbers of those under the age of 26 rose 169 percent, from 97 from September 1999 to September 2000 to 261 from September 2003 to September 2004.
Men outnumbered women in every age bracket, except for the under-16s, where young women outnumbered their male peers.