Rates of emergency department visits attributable to alcohol use in Ontario from 2003 to 2016: a retrospective population-level study

Abstract

I n Canada, alcohol use led to an estimated 5.8% of deaths in men and 0.6% of deaths in women in 2017. 1 Alcohol use also imposes a substantial burden on the Canadian health system; between 2014 and 2015, there were 77 000 hospital admissions entirely attributable to alcohol, exceeding the number of admissions for coronary artery disease. 2 A growing body of evidence from the United States, England and Australia has found that alcohol-related mortality and harms, such as hospital admissions or emergency department visits attributable to alcohol use, have increased over the past 2 decades. 3-5 In 2015, rates of hospital admissions attributable to alcohol in Canada were higher in men than in women and older adults. 2 Furthermore, mortality rates specifically attributable to alcohol-related liver disease have been increasing over time in Canada. 1 However, data are lacking on how population-level emergency department visits or hospital admissions attributable to alcohol use in Canada have changed over time and, importantly, whether any changes differ by factors such as age, sex and socioeconomic status. Although alcohol harms appear to be increasing in highincome countries, to our knowledge, only one study set in England has examined contemporary population-level changes in alcohol-related harms by age, sex and income. 4 Emerging data

Validation of a hierarchical algorithm to define chronic liver disease and cirrhosis etiology in administrative healthcare data

“…If negative, databases were searched for codes associated with alcohol-related conditions previously used in ICES data holdings (Table 1). [14,15] If all above were negative, then the patient was assigned as having NAFLD/cryptogenic liver disease etiology. The gold standard liver disease etiology from chart abstracted data was then compared to the liver disease etiology diagnosis based on the algorithm.…”

Hippocampal DNA Methylation in a Mouse Model of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder That Includes Maternal Separation Stress Only Partially Explains Changes in Gene Expression

“…The incidence of FASD varies across different populations, with the estimated prevalence in 7-to 9-year-old Canadians is between 2% and 3% (Popova et al, 2018), and between 1% and 5% in the United States . This incidence is expected to increase given a recent Canadian report that alcohol-related emergencies between 2003 and 2016 rose 4.4 times more than overall emergency visits (Myran et al, 2019). Specifically, this increase is greater for women (86.5%) than men (53.2%).…”

Computerized Clinical Decision Support System for Prompting Brief Alcohol Interventions with Treatment Seeking Smokers: A Sex-Based Secondary Analysis of a Cluster Randomized Trial

“…The rate of alcohol-related deaths has increased among women in Canada by 26% since 2001, compared to an approximately 5% increase among men [31]. In Ontario, emergency room visits due to alcohol use increased 87% for women between 2003 and 2016, compared to an increase of 53% for men during the same period [32]. Thus, the need for intervention with women that consume risky levels of alcohol is critical.…”