Rural residents who make repeated visits to hospital emergency rooms were more likely to have high levels of alcohol in their system or use illicit drugs than one-time visitors, according to researchers.

HealthDay News reported Jan. 18 that researchers at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University and University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina examined the health records of 15,370 patients who were admitted to rural trauma centers between 1994 and 2002. They found that the 528 patients admitted to a trauma center more than once for different injuries were more likely to test positive for alcohol (58.7 percent versus 39.9 percent), had average blood-alcohol levels almost twice as high, and had higher rates of cocaine use (6.4 percent versus 4.1 percent).

Repeat visitors also were older, disproportionately white, were more likely to be injured in accidental falls, and tended to be female; by contrast, the typical visitor to an urban trauma center is a young male injured by violence.

The study appears in the January 2007 issue of the Archives of Surgery.