title: Associations between alcohol related hospital admissions and alcohol consumption in Victoria: influence of socio-demographic factors.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To examine the cross-sectional ecologic associations between apparent per-capita alcohol consumption, alcohol-related hospital admission rates, and the distributions of socio-demographic factors for people residing in 76 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in Victoria, during the 1995-1996 fiscal year.
  
  
  METHODS
  Visitor-adjusted per-capita alcohol consumption was obtained from wholesale sales data from the Liquor Licensing Commission Victoria. Alcohol-related hospital admission rates were extracted from the Victorian Inpatient Minimum Dataset, and adjusted by the appropriate aetiologic fractions. Summary socio-demographic measures were derived from the 1996 Census. Their associations were analysed using multiple linear regression.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Per-capita alcohol consumption ranged from 4 to 14 litres absolute alcohol/year and alcohol-related hospital admission rates ranged from 5 to 25 per 10,000 residents/year (external-cause diagnoses) and 8-37 per 10,000 residents/year (disease diagnoses). Higher levels of per-capita consumption were associated with higher admission rates (r = 0.45 for external cause diagnoses, r = 0.66 for disease diagnoses, and r = 0.70 for all diagnoses), each per-capita increase of one litre/year corresponding to increased admission rates of 0.6, 1.5 and 2.1 per 10,000 person-years, respectively. Further adjustments by summary socio-demographic measures reduced, but did not modify, the associations between per-capita consumption and admission rates.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Summary measures of sales-based per-capita alcohol consumption and socio-demographic environments may provide useful indicators of alcohol-related morbidity in Victorian communities.
authors.affiliation: Department of General Practice and Public Health, University of Melbourne, Victoria. h.jonas@gpph.unimelb.edu.au
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Jonas
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Dietze
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rumbold
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hanlin
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cvetkovski
authors.forename: A M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Laslett
mesh_terms: D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000453:epidemiology*; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003710:Demography; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D010343:Patient Admission / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014739:Victoria / Q000453:epidemiology