Predicting adolescent alcohol drinking patterns after major injury.
BACKGROUND
Bedside alcohol counseling provided to injured adolescents during their acute medical care reduces subsequent alcohol consumption and reinjury. This counseling would be even more effective if extended beyond hospitalization to help injured youth return to normal functioning. To enhance this counseling, we first need to know the natural course of adolescent drinking during the year after injury, as well as the predictors of problem drinking during that year.


METHODS
Prospective cohort study that described the natural history of adolescent drinking during the year after traumatic injury and identified predictors of increased alcohol use. Randomly sampled injured adolescents 12 years to 18 years of age, admitted to the surgical services of a Level I trauma center were interviewed to assess alcohol consumption at baseline and 2 months, 5 months, and 12 months after injury admission.


RESULTS
Drinking increased steadily over the year, with this increase beginning in the months immediately after injury. Greater preinjury alcohol consumption, greater number of cumulative preinjury traumatic life experiences, and increasing age were independent positive predictors of increased drinking during the year after injury. Increased injury severity was a negative predictor such that the more severe the injury was, the less the adolescent drank during the year after injury.


CONCLUSIONS
This documented postinjury drinking pattern and its predictors can now identify for the purposes of extended counseling those adolescents most likely to drink heavily during the year after injury.
Dunn
Chris
C
Department of Psychiatry, University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, WA 98104-2499, USA. cdunn@u.washington.edu
Rivara
Frederick P
FP
Donovan
Dennis
D
Fan
Ming-Yu
MY
Russo
Joan
J
Jurkovich
Gregory
G
Zatzick
Douglas
D
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D000367:Age Factors; D000428:Alcohol Drinking; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D011446:Prospective Studies; D013997:Time Factors; D015599:Trauma Severity Indices; D014947:Wounds and Injuries / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy