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Subjects
We used the Emergency Department Information System (EDIS) to measure presentations of 15–29-year-olds from 28 April 2005 to 28 April 2010. We were limited to 11 hospitals (out of a possible 28) that contributed data to EDIS for the duration of the study. However, importantly, these hospitals saw 60% of all ED presentations in Queensland (see Results). We used the following International Classification of Diseases 10th Edition (ICD-10) codes in the principal diagnosis field: F10 codes for mental and behavioural disorders due to alcohol; S00-T18 codes for injury (excluding superficial injury S codes); Y90–91.9 for evidence of alcohol involvement by level of intoxication or blood alcohol level; R78.0 for a finding of alcohol in blood; and Z04.0–0.5 for blood-alcohol and blood-drug test, or examination and observation following injury. Where present, we also obtained external cause of injury codes as follows: V01–94 for transport accidents; W00–X59 for other accidental injuries except W20–W21 and W35-W64; X60-X84 for intentional self-harm; and X93-Y34 for assault and events of undetermined intent. We used narrow and broad definitions of alcohol-related harm. The former was restricted to codes that are solely associated with alcohol: F10, Y90–91.9, R78.0 and Z04.0–0.5. The latter included the narrow definition plus all the injury codes. We used alcohol-attributable fractions (AAFs) to adjust for the fact that not all injures are due to alcohol. AAFs assign the likelihood that any given condition has an association with alcohol using previously published clinical data. Alcoholic cirrhosis, for example, has an AAF of 1.0, while road accidents (V01-V89) have a value of 0.4 for males and 0.31 for females. The reported prevalence is multiplied by the AAF to estimate the morbidity due to alcohol. We used AAFs derived from data from Australia or Britain. 23 ,24 Where cases did not have F, V, W, X or Y codes, we were unable to apply cause-specific AAFs. We therefore applied an average across all injuries of that type using AAFs appropriate to the relevant gender and age group.
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