Substance use among non-fatally injured patients attended at emergency departments in Spain.

Aims: To describe the prevalence of recent use of alcohol, medication, and illegal drugs among patients who attended emergency departments (EDs) as a result of suffering an injury due to any external mechanism and to identify factors associated with alcohol and drug use.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in eight university hospitals in Spain. Participants were adult patients admitted to a trauma ED.

Substance use among road traffic casualties admitted to emergency departments.

Objective: To describe the prevalence of recent psychoactive substance use and associated factors among road traffic casualties admitted to emergency departments.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out, including adults injured in road traffic crashes admitted to the emergency department (ED) of eight hospitals in Catalonia (Spain), during three cross-sections, each of 4 days duration (2005-2006). Information sources were an interview, an oral fluid specimen and the patient's clinical record.

Theoretical prediction of the photoinduced chemiluminescence of pesticides.

Although it is relatively easy to find chemiluminescent (CL) molecules working on the field of direct liquid phase (especially employing strong oxidants), the molecules found as chemiluminescent are normally very weak CL compounds for developing suitable analytical CL-procedures. Therefore, it is mandatory to develop new strategies to enhance in a simple way the native chemiluminescence of such a compounds, and even to increase the number of compounds to be determined by direct chemiluminescence. Photoinduced chemiluminescence (Ph-CL) results in a simple and easily on-line accessible strategy to solve these disadvantages.

Injury profiles of road traffic deaths.

The objective is to describe injuries of road traffic deaths in Barcelona and identify injury profiles by road user type, through a cross-sectional study including road traffic deaths for the period 1997-2004. The data source was the Institut de Medicina Legal de Catalunya. Diagnoses were coded using the International Classification of Diseases, 9th revision, Clinical Modification, and classified using the Barell Matrix.

Motor-vehicle injury patterns in emergency-department patients in a south-European urban setting.

The objectives are to identify the main injury patterns in the various types of user (of cars, motorcycles/mopeds, bicycles and pedestrians) injured in traffic crashes and treated in hospital emergency services, along with their main demographic characteristics. One-year cumulative survey all of patients attended to emergency departments in Barcelona, Spain, over a 12-month period (1998) for injuries due to motor vehicle crashes. Bivariate descriptive analyses were conducted to identify the different profiles of motor-vehicle injury patients by age, sex, user type, injured body region and type of injuries.