Alcohol-Associated Illness and Injury and Ambulance Calls in a Midwestern College Town: A Four-Year Retrospective Analysis

From Prehospital Emergency Care:

Background. Alcohol is often a factor in illness and injury among college-aged individuals. Ambulance services responding to 9-1-1 calls in college towns regularly encounter patients who have consumed alcohol to the point of intoxication and subsequently suffered an injury or experienced an illness necessitating prehospital emergency care. Objectives. The first objective was to review ambulance calls in a Midwestern college town in order to identify patterns or trends related to alcohol consumption. Another objective was to determine to what extent, if any, underage drinking was a factor in these calls. A final objective was to determine whether there were types of illness or injuries related to 9-1-1 calls that were involved with alcohol consumption among college-aged students.

Methods. This was a retrospective study using secondary data of four years of ambulance calls that occurred in a specific geographic region of a college town. All patient care reports (PCRs) included alcohol consumption as a pertinent factor in the call. Data were de-identified and in some cases aggregated to ensure confidentiality. Descriptive statistics were used to identify prevalence and incidence of injury and illness and patient demographics.

Results. Of the ambulance calls for service in the geographic area, 44.4% to 45.8% identified as “downtown” had alcohol consumption as a reported factor in the PCR. The number of calls for service that involved patients below the legal drinking age (21 years) was small but increased between 2004 and 2007. Calls involving male patients made up the majority of calls with alcohol as a factor. The majority of alcohol-related calls for service were for traumatic injuries, sexual assaults and rapes, poisonings or drug ingestions, and altered levels of consciousness.

Conclusion. Alcohol consumption was a comorbid factor in illness and injury that necessitated prehospital emergency medical care in one Midwestern college town. Further research is needed to determine whether these results can be generalized beyond this one geographic location or if causality can be determined between alcohol consumption and injuries or illnesses that lead to emergency medical services calls.

Baby Born Early Aboard Australia Medical Chopper

From EMSResponder:

A Wollongong mother and her newborn daughter are in Townsville hospital after the baby was delivered 14 weeks prematurely during a RACQ-CQ Rescue helicopter flight from Hamilton Island to Mackay.

The chopper was just five minutes from landing and flying over Mt Blackwood, north of Mackay, when flight paramedic Mel Bernas delivered the baby with the help of air crewman Darren Bobbin.

The birth was the first in a RACQ-CQ Rescue helicopter in the service’s 14 years of operation in the Mackay region.

Use of CT Scans, MRIs on the Rise in ER

From WebMD:

Advanced medical imaging is increasingly being used to evaluate emergency room patients complaining of chest or abdominal pain, the CDC says in a new report.

For chest pain, advanced techniques such as CT scans and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) increased 367% in the 1999-2008 period, study author Farida Bhuiya, MPH, tells WebMD.

And the same techniques used on ER patients with abdominal pain have increased 122.6%.

“This really stood out to us,” Bhuiya says. “Is this increase in medical imaging helping us narrow down serious visits and weeding out those that are not as serious, or is imaging being used in excess? We don’t know the answer to that, but we kind of put it out there.”