Recent epidemiological studies suggest that acute alcohol ingestion may result in differential response to injury and recovery. However, little research has been conducted concerning the role of alcohol in traumatic response. The few studies addressing this issue report conflicting findings, and most have been limited by methodological short comings in the evaluation. The significance of this issue has implications for both the, drinking-driving and medical fields; knowledge of a positive relationship between alcohol consumption and morbidity/mortality could stimulate both primary and secondary interventions to reduce impaired driving, and alter current medical assessment practices and management of trauma victims. The objective of the study is to explore the relationships between BAC and injury severity and recovery among a sample of hospitalized motor vehicle accident trauma victims, circumventing many of the methodological problems noted in previous research studies. This will be a descriptive study about the following issues: (la) Can BAC improve the prediction of injury severity after the relationships of other relevant variables are removed?; (lb) Can alcohol dependency improve the prediction of injury severity after the relationship of BAC is removed?; (2) Can alcohol dependency improve the prediction of injury recovery after the relationship of injury severity is taken into account? Data to be collected include; on admission - blood alcohol levels, injury severity measures from the patient's medical file, a self- report alcohol dependency measure on a subset of patients and crash-specific data from police reports. Using hierarchical regression analysis, the focus of interest will be the additional predicting power of BAC and alcohol dependency to improving the prediction of the criterion measures, injury severity and recovery, while controlling for other relevant variables.
