Alcohol and Violence in the emergeny department: A regional report from the WHO Collaborative Study on alcohol and Injuries

BORGES, GUILHERME; OROZCO, RICARDO; CREMONTE, MARIANA; BUZI-FIGLIE, N.; CHERPITEL, CHERYL

Salud Pública de México

Instituto de Salud Pública de México

Lugar: Distrito Federal; Año: 2008 vol. 50 p. 6 - 11

0036-3634

Objective. To determine the relative risk (RR) of non-fatal unintentional and violence-related injury associated with alcohol consumption in three emergency departments in Latin America (2001-2002). Material and Methods. Pairmatched case-crossover was used to obtain RR estimates for alcohol in non-fatal injuries among 447 patients in Argentina(A), 489 in Brazil (B) and 455 in Mexico (M). Intentional (violence) or unintentional (non-violence) injury status were the main outcomes Results. About 46% of violence-related cases involved alcohol (versus 11.5% for non-violence related cases). The risk of violence-related injury increased with drinking and had an OR= 15.0 (95% confidence interval (CI), 5.8-39.1), with an OR= 4.2 (CI= 2.7-6.5) for unintentional injuries. Conclusions. Increasing amounts of drinking may have pronounced consequences on the risk of triggering an injury, especially for a violence-related injury. The RR estimates provided here can be useful for new estimates on alcohol and the burden of disease.