Epidemiology of alcohol-related unintentional drowning: is post-mortem ethanol production a real challenge?

Background: Post-mortem (PM) ethanol production may hamper the interpretation of blood alcohol concentration (BAC) in victims of drowning. Different exclusion criteria (e.g.

Purchases of prescription drugs before an alcohol-related death: A ten-year follow-up study using linked routine data.

Background: Physician's intention to prescribe drugs could potentially be used to improve targeting of alcohol interventions and enhanced disease management to patients with a high risk of severe alcohol-related harm within outpatient settings.

Methods: Comparison of ten-year incidence trajectories of 13.8 million reimbursed purchases of prescription drugs among 303,057 Finnish men and women of whom 7490 ultimately died due to alcohol-related causes (Alc+), 14,954 died without alcohol involvement (Alc-), and 280,613 survived until the end of 2007.

Unintentional drowning: Role of medicinal drugs and alcohol.

Background: Alcohol is a well-known risk factor in unintentional drownings. Whereas psychotropic drugs, like alcohol, may cause psychomotor impairment and affect cognition, no detailed studies have focused on their association with drowning. Finland provides extensive post-mortem toxicological data for studies on drowning because of its high medico-legal autopsy rates.

Fatal toxicity index of medicinal drugs based on a comprehensive toxicology database.

The fatal toxicity index (FTI) is the absolute number of fatal poisonings caused by a particular drug divided by its consumption figure. Consequently, it is a useful measure in evaluating toxicity of the drug and its relevance in fatal poisonings. In this study, we assessed the FTI of medicinal drugs in 3 years (2005, 2009, and 2013) in Finland.