Alcohol-related emergency room visits on the rise, especially in young women, and doctors are calling the statistics alarming.
Dr. Peter Tanuseputro says, “We’ve seen over the last fourteen years that alcohol visits to the ER are increasing tremendously - 240 per cent – so that means it’s gone over two-and-a-half times essentially of what we saw ten years ago, fifteen years ago.”
The area of concern is young women between the ages of 25 to 29.
“If you look at the total visits for women it went up by 110 per cent over the study period,” says researcher Dr. Daniel Myran.
The study was conducted by researchers in Ottawa who sifted through data from hospitals across the province between 2003 and 2016, focusing on alcohol-related ER visits.
“There were 760,000 of them over the 14-year period and that’s more than one per cent of all emergency room visits in the province,” Myran adds.
Not only is that costly to the health care system, it can be dangerously costly to a person's overall health.
“The ER visits are something that shows more those short-term harms - alcohol poisoning, injuries and things like that, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg because we can also see a lot of chronic disease - heart problems, liver problems, cancer related,” says Melissa Knowler from the Middlesex-London Health Unit.
The health unit has a campaign called “Rethink Your Drinking,” which provides awareness and education when it comes to alcohol.
Knowler explains, “It’s people taking the time to understand how much they’re drinking and...trying to make sure they understand what a standard drink is to reduce their risks.”
Myran is hoping this report will be an eye-opener for the health care system and policy makers.
“I think the burden on the volume of patients being seen in emergency rooms, the volume of patients coming into hospitals and the economic cost to our health care system from this are enormous.”
