Citation

Vichitkunakorn P, Donroman T, Chomhom P, Jinwong T, Wongpratoom J, Tantidhama N, Pruphetkaew N. Transp. Res. F Traffic Psychol. Behav. 2022; 91: 514-521.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.trf.2022.11.001

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of blood alcohol testing in decreasing the prevalence of current one-month drinkers among road traffic crash patients within emergency departments at one, two, and three months after a crash. A cluster quasi-experimental study was conducted on 600 crash patients who visited one of the emergency departments at 21 hospitals in Udon Thani province, Thailand. The hospitals were categorised into a (i) high-adherence hospital group (≥70% of all patients) and (ii) low-adherence hospital group (<70% of all patients) according to the compliance of blood alcohol testing in their emergency departments. The data were collected by a trained nurse using a structured questionnaire. The primary outcome was the prevalence of one-month current drinkers. We included 600 patients: 291 from six hospitals in the high-adherence group and 309 from 15 hospitals in the low-adherence group. The prevalence of one-month current drinkers significantly decreased in both the high-adherence and low-adherence groups. However, the prevalence of current drinkers at two and three months after a crash was not statistically significant compared to that one month prior to a crash (48.0% to 19.3% and 31.7% to 13.8% in the high- and low-adherence hospital groups, respectively; p < 0.05 from McNemar's test). The effectiveness of blood alcohol testing in decreasing the prevalence of one-month current drinkers among traffic crash patients within emergency departments was observed to be statistically significant only at one month after a crash, and not at two and three months.

Keywords: Ethanol impaired driving

Language: en

Keywords

Blood alcohol test; Crash; Driver; Emergency department