Sampling technique for medcially significant drug abuse.

Abstract

Although there are many reports of drug habits of students, there has been little information regarding how much of drug abuse is medically significant. Deaths from overdose provide data from extreme cases and are comparatively rare as opposed to admissions to emergency rooms. Further, some drugs of abuse such as marijuana and LSD do not ifi themselves cause death. One practical and measurable indication of significance is whether drug use is the direct or indirect cause of admission to a hospital. With the assistance of the administrators and medical record librarians of several major hospitals in Portland and Salem, we sampled records at regular intervals for the 5 years, 1968 through 1972. These hospitals handle the vast majority of all hospitalizations in this area. All of the records for admissions to the emergency rooms of these hospitals were sampled for the first week in January, April, July, and October for the years 1968-1972. Every emergency room admission note was read, and any note in the chart indicating that the reason for admission was directly or indirectly related to drugs or alcohol was recorded as was the name of the drug when indicated. In addition, data was obtained for all admissions for drug abuse to the state hospital which serves this area. If more than one drug was indicated as a 885