Sociodemographic changes in emergency department visits due to alcohol during COVID-19.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Little detailed sociodemographic information is available about how alcohol use and associated health care visits have changed during COVID-19. Therefore, we assessed how rates of emergency department (ED) visits due to alcohol have changed during COVID-19 by age and sex and for individuals living in urban and rural settings and low and high-income neighborhoods.

Methods

Our cohort included 13,660,516 unique Ontario residents between the ages of 10-105. We compared rates and characteristics of ED visits due to alcohol, identified using ICD-10 codes, from March 11-August 31 2020 to the same period in the prior 3 years. We used negative binomial regressions to examine to examine changes is visits during COVID-19 after accounting for temporal and seasonal trends.

SUBMITTER: Myran DT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9759020 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature