ESTIMATING ALCOHOL INVOLVEMENT IN TRAUMA PATIENTS - SEARCH FOR A SURROGATE

This study explores the potential for the development of a surrogate f or alcohol-involved traumatic injury. It presents a bivariate probit a nalysis that simultaneously models likelihoods of patients being teste d for blood alcohol content (BAC) and having positive BACs given testi ng using 17,356 adult trauma cases selected from the California Region al Trauma Registry. It concludes that patient and injury characteristi cs predict both testing and BAC, and that a weighting scheme may be pr ofitably used to determine changes in levels of alcohol-involved traum a in populations over time in the absence of empirical measurement of BAC.