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TechnographHospitals expose binge drinking health risks
By Allison Sues
Posted: 6/29/05 Section: News
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Editor's note: This is the third part in a four-part series on binge drinking.
Adi Siah, a senior in business, laid his face against the public toilet seat in his dorm bathroom. He had drank 10 shots in under an hour and had been throwing up as he clung onto consciousness. When his friends thought they saw blood in his vomit they called the emergency room.
Paramedics tested Siah's blood alcohol content and said that he needed to go to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. Before they could get Siah into an ambulance, he refused and signed a refusal of care form freeing the hospital from any responsibilities or liabilities with regards to Siah's health that night.
"I probably should've gone to the hospital," Siah said. "But, I'm a cheapskate. I didn't want to pay for it."
The extent of binge drinking is obvious at the University. According to UIUC's Alcohol and Other Drug Survey, 77 percent of students drank alcohol regularly and 61 percent binge drank regularly in 2004.
You hear the presence of binge drinking on campus in casual conversations before lectures begin, see it in the lines outside the bars and smell it in the alcoholic perfume of Green Street. However, the most dangerous aspects of the University's binge drinking are hidden away in the emergency rooms of Carle Foundation Hospital and Provena Covenant Hospital, both in Urbana.
Between Aug. 31, 2004 and Mar. 30, 2005, Carle Hospital treated 120 patients between the ages of 18 and 24 for alcohol intoxication.
"If you included alcohol-related injuries from drunken falls, fights and accidents, the numbers would be even higher," said Patty Metzler, a registered nurse in Carle Hospital's emergency room. "Carle only handles about half of these cases; Provena gets the other half."
Worse than being hidden in hospital rooms is when the grave dangers of binge drinking are hidden away in dorm rooms or friends' apartments. A general fear and misunderstanding of hospital care leaves University students sleeping off alcohol poisoning each weekend.
Adi Siah, a senior in business, laid his face against the public toilet seat in his dorm bathroom. He had drank 10 shots in under an hour and had been throwing up as he clung onto consciousness. When his friends thought they saw blood in his vomit they called the emergency room.
Paramedics tested Siah's blood alcohol content and said that he needed to go to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. Before they could get Siah into an ambulance, he refused and signed a refusal of care form freeing the hospital from any responsibilities or liabilities with regards to Siah's health that night.
"I probably should've gone to the hospital," Siah said. "But, I'm a cheapskate. I didn't want to pay for it."
The extent of binge drinking is obvious at the University. According to UIUC's Alcohol and Other Drug Survey, 77 percent of students drank alcohol regularly and 61 percent binge drank regularly in 2004.
You hear the presence of binge drinking on campus in casual conversations before lectures begin, see it in the lines outside the bars and smell it in the alcoholic perfume of Green Street. However, the most dangerous aspects of the University's binge drinking are hidden away in the emergency rooms of Carle Foundation Hospital and Provena Covenant Hospital, both in Urbana.
Between Aug. 31, 2004 and Mar. 30, 2005, Carle Hospital treated 120 patients between the ages of 18 and 24 for alcohol intoxication.
"If you included alcohol-related injuries from drunken falls, fights and accidents, the numbers would be even higher," said Patty Metzler, a registered nurse in Carle Hospital's emergency room. "Carle only handles about half of these cases; Provena gets the other half."
Worse than being hidden in hospital rooms is when the grave dangers of binge drinking are hidden away in dorm rooms or friends' apartments. A general fear and misunderstanding of hospital care leaves University students sleeping off alcohol poisoning each weekend.
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