1 Out Of 3 ER Visits Are Alcohol Related: Here’s What The Patients Drank [Charts]

Nearly one-third of all emergency-room visits for injuries in the U.S. are alcohol related. And a new study has found that certain types and brands of alcohol are more likely to be implicated.

The study, led by Dr. David Jernigan, associate professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, surveyed 105 people who visited an ER in Baltimore in a one-year period.

The first to look at whether certain types or brands of alcohol are overrepresented, this study found that there were far more vodka drinkers in the ER sample group than might be expected given vodka’s national market share.

The study also found that five brands of beer were consumed most often by people who ended up in the ER: Budweiser, Steel Reserve, Colt 45, Bud Ice and Bud Light.

However, the findings of this Baltimore-based study may apply only to that city, Dr. Jernigan cautioned.

“The results of this study do not prove anything, as the dataset is very small,” he said in an email.

“This was a very small pilot study, in a single emergency room in a single city. Differences that are reported as significant are so for this sample in this ER, but [they] cannot be generalized beyond that.”

Dr. Jernigan and his colleagues hope to conduct similar studies in other U.S. cities.

Here’s a chart that shows the national market share of different types of alcohol (black dots) and their representation in the ER sample group (orange bars). When the orange bar is higher than the black dot, it means that type of alcohol is overrepresented in the ER sample group.

This chart suggests that drinkers of vodka, brandy/cognac and gin are more likely to end up in the ER.

Here’s a chart that shows the national market share of different brands of alcohol (black dots) and their representation in the ER sample group (orange bars). When the orange bar is higher than the black dot, it means that type of alcohol is overrepresented in the ER sample group.