FoxHere in Britain we love a drink over the weekend but, according to a new study, our alcohol consumption may really be getting out of hand.
The new research has confirmed that, in one UK city at least, more than two-thirds of emergency room visits on weekends, especially those in the early hours of the morning, are directly related to alcohol consumption.
As reported by Ars Technica, Newcastle University health researchers carried out the study which found that 70 per cent of those who visited A&E over the weekends in Newcastle were completed wasted.
Health researcher Kathryn Parkinson wrote in Emergency Medicine Journal that “traumatic injury was the most common reason for attendance”, although “psychiatric problems” also accounted for a large amount of drunken ER visits.
UniversalParkinson and her colleagues analysed health records from a “local inner-city hospital” from the 2010-2011 year, then conducting breathalyser tests on admitted ER patients in 2012 and 2013 to get the results.
They found that, overall, alcohol-related visits to the hospital hovered around 15.2 per cent in 2012-13, but the numbers rose dramatically on weekends, rising to 70 per cent.
Now, admittedly Newcastle has a bit of a reputation for being the binge-drinking capital of the UK, but it really wouldn’t shock us if the statistics were similar throughout many cities in Britain.
So be careful out there if you’re having a drink or three on Christmas Eve, everyone. You don’t want to wake up on December 25 in a hospital bed!
