Drinking context and cause of injury: Emergency department studies from 22 countries.

Background: It is estimated that up to a third of injuries requiring emergency department admission are alcohol-related. While injuries that are alcohol-related are unsurprising to emergency department staff, less is understood about the precursors to the injury event.

Methods: Using data from representative emergency department injury patients in 22 countries, we examined associations between context of injury (private or public), cause of injury (fall or trip, being stuck/cut/ or burned and violence) and alcohol use.

Risk of injury after alcohol consumption from case-crossover studies in five countries from the Americas.

Aims: This study aimed to: (i) provide relative risk (RR) estimates between acute alcohol use and injuries from emergency departments (EDs) in the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Guyana, Nicaragua and Panama, and (ii) test whether the RR differs if two control periods for the estimates were used.

Design: Case-crossover methodology was used to obtain estimates of the RR of having an injury within 6 hours after drinking alcohol, using a pair-matching design with control periods of the same time of day on the day prior to injury, and the same time of day and day of week during the week prior to injury.

Setting: EDs.