Ronald Maio, DO, MS, Injury Research Center, University of Michigan, 300 NIB 2D06, Box 0437, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-0437, 734-936-1724, ronmaio@umich.edu

A positive blood alcohol concentration (BAC+) is a well-known predisposing factor for a MVC as well as nonuse of a seatbelt. Less well known is the fact that, after controlling for age and crash effects, MVC occupants with a BAC+ will have greater injury severity, as measured by the Injury Severity Score (ISS) and greater mortality, than BAC-occupants. Although the literature has addressed this issue from an acute patient care perspective, the implications from a public health perspective have not been adequately addressed. In this presentation a brief review of the literature supporting the potentiating effect will be presented. Four implications for Public Health will be presented : 1) Epidemiological studies of MVCs: failure to consider and adjust for alcohol’s potentiating effect may result in erroneous conclusions 2) The costs for alcohol-related MVCs: Current cost methods regarding alcohol related MVCs do not consider those crashes where none of the involved drivers are BAC+ but one or more occupants are. This results in an underestimation of alcohol-related MVC injury costs which may affect how alcohol-related MVCs rank among health care priorities. 3) Intervention strategies to prevent alcohol-related MVCs: The potentiating effect of alcohol on MVC injury is not routinely incorporated in prevention strategies. Doing so may increase the effectiveness of such interventions 4) Implications for studying the effect of alcohol on other mechanisms of injury: Since the potentiating effect is occurring at levels of low crash severity, this suggests this potentiating effect may be occurring in other mechanism of injuries.

Learning Objectives:

• 3. List four areas regarding the potentiating effect of alcohol on MVC injury that are important to the field of Public Health.
  7. Articulate the in what way these areas are important.
  11. Provide a specific example of how consideration of the potentiation of alcohol on MVC injury can affect studies on regional variation of MVC mortality.

Keywords: Alcohol, Motor Vehicles

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.