Drugs, guns, and kids: The association between substance use and injury caused by interpersonal violence☆
Section snippets
Materials and methods
The Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans (Charity campus) trauma registry was used to identify patients sustaining life-threatening injuries who presented to our American College of Surgeons verified level 1 trauma center over a 6-month interval. These injuries were classified by prehospital care providers and emergency department triage staff as life threatening. Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) guidelines were followed during resuscitations, which were supervised by attending
Results
During the 6-month study period there were 743 total patients with life-threatening injuries admitted to the trauma center. A total of 576 patients (78%) had complete serum and urine toxicology studies available. Three hundred sixty-eight (64%) patients tested positive for alcohol or drugs.
We focused our attention on the cohort of patients aged less than 21 years. The following results are drawn from our review of this subset of patients. Of the 186 patients in this age group, 126 (68%) had
Discussion
Our data indicate that there is ample evidence of alcohol and drug use in children and adolescents who suffer life-threatening injuries. Moreover, more than two thirds of the injured children aged 14 or 15 tested positive for alcohol or drugs. There was a strong association between interpersonal violence as a cause of injury and positive blood and urine testing for alcohol and drugs. Although we did not observe positive drug and alcohol tests in children less than 14 years old, there is no
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Cited by (30)
Social risk behaviors for firearm violence
2023, Encyclopedia of Child and Adolescent Health, First EditionPenetrating trauma: Relationships to recreational drug and alcohol use
2022, American Journal of Emergency MedicineCitation Excerpt :In a level one trauma setting in California in 2004 penetrating trauma was more likely to be associated with drug and alcohol use than blunt trauma and 42.7% of trauma deaths had a positive drug screen [35]. Madan et al. showed that gunshot wounds in adolescents are independently associated with positive drug screens and that 72% of gunshot wound victims had some evidence of substance abuse [36]. Another study found that among homicide victims in 9 states, alcohol (37.5%) and marijuana (31.0%) were frequently identified [37].
Factors associated with pediatric firearm injury and enrollment in a violence intervention program
2021, Journal of Pediatric SurgeryCitation Excerpt :This study both reinforces and expands upon the current literature on pediatric firearm violence. Several of the psychosocial and behavioral factors we found to be significantly associated with FI were consistent with prior research on firearm injured youths, including older adolescence [6–15], male sex [6–13], separated or divorced parents [18], being on probation [22], illicit substance use [22–24], and lack of enrollment in school [19,21]. While previous studies have shown gang affiliation [40,41] and violence exposure [42,43] to be associated with interpersonal violence, this is the first study to our knowledge that demonstrates a significant association between acute firearm injury and both gang membership and losses in family/social network due to violence in a pediatric population.
Bridging the Gap: Drug and Alcohol Screening in Adolescent Trauma Patients
2018, Journal of Emergency NursingCitation Excerpt :In 2014, more than 1.6 million people between the ages of 12 and 20 reported driving under the influence of alcohol in the past year.8,9 Attempts to characterize the adolescent trauma population and define variables to hone screening have revealed that patient age is a consistent predictor of a positive screen, with the rate of positive screening increasing exponentially as adolescents approach adulthood.10–13 Variables such as gender, race, revised trauma score, injury severity score, mechanism of injury, presence of violent mechanism, and mental status at presentation had no correlation between a positive and negative screen.10–13
Pediatric trauma patient alcohol screening: A 3 year review of screening at a Level i Pediatric Trauma Center using the CRAFFT tool
2014, Journal of Pediatric SurgeryGunshot wounds to the spine in post-Katrina New Orleans
2013, InjuryCitation Excerpt :While the main cause of GSW varies with geographical location [31], within the urban setting in the USA, gang and drug-related violence far exceeds all other etiologies [19,22]. Furthermore, there is a direct association between drug-use and injury caused by interpersonal violence [7,10,11,24,25]. Previous studies conducted in New Orleans have described the association between substance use and traumatic injury within the urban population [24,25].
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Address reprint requests to Lewis Flint, MD, FACS, Regional Trauma Center, Tampa General Hospital, PO Box 1289, Suite E-220, Tampa, FL 33601.