Alcohol use has been associated with a wide range of physical and social problems, including disease, accidental and intentional violence, homelessness, unemployment, and marital discord. Injuries are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States, and alcohol is involved in many of them. For example, up to 50 percent of fatal automobile crashes involve alcohol and result in more than 20,000 fatalities annually. Alcohol also has a demonstrated association with risk of injury from falls and drownings, and about half of all fire and burn deaths are associated with alcohol use. Many individuals end up in an alcohol and drug rehab clinics.
Yet proving a causal role for alcohol in traumatic events or determining the magnitude of the relationship is difficult, owing to methodological problems in the designs of many of the studies used to support the contention of causality. Ideally, the most persuasive evidence would be provided by studies that compare exposure to alcohol (blood alcohol levels) among injury victims with exposure among comparable, uninjured persons who are selected for study when they appear at a later date at the same site and at the same time of day that the original incident
occurred. Studies of this type, however, are logistically difficult to execute and therefore infrequently undertaken. Other methodological difficulties encountered with study designs include the proper determination of cases while in an alcohol detox center, measurement of the extent of alcohol exposure, distortion of results as a consequence of interviewer biases, and determination of the temporal sequence of exposure and incident. Real Estate |
