The association of psychiatric comorbidity and use of the emergency department among persons with substance use disorders: an observational cohort study.

Background: Psychiatric and substance use problems are commonly found to be contributing factors to frequent Emergency Department (ED) use, yet little research has focused on the association between substance use and psychiatric comorbidity. This study assesses the association of a psychiatric comorbidity on (ED) use among patients with substance use disorders (SUDs).

Methods: The study focuses on 6,865 patients who were diagnosed with SUDs in the ED of a large urban hospital in the southern United States from January 1994 - June 1998.

Brain metabolite concentration ratios in vivo: multisite reproducibility by single-voxel 1H MR spectroscopy.

Ten normal subjects were scanned identically at three separate sites (Little Rock, Houston, and New Orleans) to evaluate the reproducibility of brain metabolite ratios in single-voxel (1)H point-resolved spectroscopy sequence (PRESS) magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopy in vivo. All scans were processed by a single individual at a single site. Coefficients of variation of the measured metabolite ratios generally were in the range found for previous single-voxel, single-site reproducibility studies.

Emergency department use of persons with comorbid psychiatric and substance abuse disorders.

Study Objective: This study assesses the relationship between substance abuse comorbidity and emergency department use among patients with psychiatric disorders in a large academic medical center.

Methods: Data were obtained from an administrative database including every patient visit to the ED of a large, academically affiliated county hospital from January 1994 through June 1998. This study focuses on 12,212 patients who were given a diagnosis of a primary psychiatric disorder in the ED.