Reports claim a 100% increase in illegal blood alcohol levels in patients admitted in emergency care over five years.
According to report that has been published in the Emergency Medicine Journal, a study conducted in an major hospital, the blood alcohol levels among the patients admitted in emergency care have gone up well above the legal limit, on an average risen to almost 113% in the past 5 years.
The report further added that though men more consistently outnumber women, the absolute numbers of women who are intoxicated have almost doubled.The authors of the study explained that they had come to the conclusion on the basis of their findings with the results of lab tests taken for blood alcohol levels, when requested by emergency care doctors at Belfast City Hospital, Northern Ireland, between September 1999 and September 2000 and from September 2003 to September 2004.
The annual number of alcohol tests rose from 825 to 2031, an increase of 146%. Blood alcohol tests are required to exclude certain forms of serious illness and to inform treatment.
Most of those requiring a lab test were aged between 36 and 45 across both years, but the numbers of those under the age of 26 soared 169%, rising from 97 to 261.
Men outnumbered women in every age bracket, except for the under 16s, where young women outnumbered their male peers.
The number of patients with blood alcohol above 80 mg/100 ml, which is above the legally acceptable driving limit and therefore considered to indicate intoxication, rose from 526 to 1124, representing an increase of 113%.
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The authors say that the rise in lab tests for blood alcohol is unlikely to reflect greater enthusiasm on the part of emergency care staff for the procedure; rather, it is more likely to reflect need, they say.
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