Drinking, Drug Abuse Boosts Injury Rate in Rural U.S.

Thursday, January 18, 2007; 12:00 AM

Copyright © 2007 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

THURSDAY, Jan. 18 (HealthDay News) -- Substance abuse is common among the 3.4 percent of U.S. rural residents who make repeat visits to trauma centers, new research shows.

Reporting in the January issue of Archives of Surgery, researchers at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University and University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina, Greenville, assessed 15,370 patients admitted to a rural trauma center between 1994 and 2002.

Of those patients, 528 (3.4 percent) were admitted to the trauma center more than once for different injuries.

Compared to non-repeat patients, repeat patients:

• were older (55.9 years vs. 39.7 years),
• were disproportionately white (65.2 percent vs. 56.5 percent),
• were more often female (49.1 percent vs. 37.3 percent),
• had a higher percentage of positive blood alcohol screening results (58.7 percent vs. 39.9 percent),
• had higher average blood ethanol levels (132.1 milligrams per deciliter vs. 69.5 milligrams per deciliter),
• had higher rates of cocaine use (6.4 percent vs. 4.1 percent).

The study also found that patients who admitted to the trauma center three to five times were more likely to be injured in a fall (63.8 percent) than those admitted twice (47.2 percent) or once (24.4 percent).

Patients admitted to the trauma center three to five times were less likely to be injured in a vehicle accident (10.3 percent) than those admitted twice (28.4 percent) or once (48.1 percent).

Many of the characteristics of patients admitted to rural trauma centers differ from those of patients admitted to urban trauma centers, who tend to be young males who been injured by violence, the study authors noted.

More information

The U. S. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control has more about different people, different injuries.