{"doi":"10.1111/add.15589","title":"Changes in alcohol‐related hospital visits during COVID‐19 in New York City","abstract":"BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Increased alcohol consumption has been proposed as a potential consequence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. There has been little scrutiny of alcohol use behaviors resulting in hospital visits, which is essential to guide pandemic public policy. We aimed to determine whether COVID-19 peak restrictions were associated with increased hospital visits for alcohol use or withdrawal. Secondary objectives were to describe differences based on age, sex and race, and to examine alcohol-related complication incidence. DESIGN: Multi-center, retrospective, pre-post study. SETTING: New York City health system with five participating hospitals. PARTICIPANTS: Adult emergency department encounters for alcohol use, alcoholic gastritis or pancreatitis or hepatitis, alcohol withdrawal syndrome, withdrawal seizure or delirium tremens. MEASUREMENTS: Age, sex, race, site and encounter diagnosis. Encounters were compared between 2019 and 2020 for 1 March to 31 May. FINDINGS: There were 2790 alcohol-related visits during the 2019 study period and 1793 in 2020, with a decrease in total hospital visits. Of 4583 alcohol-related visits, median age was 47 years, with 22.3% females. In 2020 there was an increase in percentage of visits for alcohol withdrawal [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 1.34, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.07-1.67] and withdrawal with complications (aOR = 1.40, 95% CI = 1.14-1.72), and a decline in percentage of hospital visits for alcohol use (aOR = 0.70, 95% CI = 0.59-0.85) and use with complications (aOR = 0.71, 95% CI = 0.58-0.88). It is unknown whether use visit changes mirror declines in other chief complaints. The age groups 18-29 and 60-69 years were associated with increased visits for use and decreased visits for withdrawal, as were non-white race groups. Sex was not associated with alcohol-related visit changes despite male predominance. CONCLUSIONS: In New York City during the initial COVID-19 peak (1 March to 31 May 2020), hospital visits for alcohol withdrawal increased while those for alcohol use decreased.","journal":"Addiction","year":2021,"id":170871,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":27,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9568,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":527232,"name":"Carmen Vargas‐Torres","orcid":"0000-0002-9910-3354","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":704505,"name":"Nicholas Genes","orcid":"0000-0002-9836-2477","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":331583,"name":"Marc A. Probst","orcid":"0000-0002-1503-7178","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":527231,"name":"Alex F. Manini","orcid":"0000-0001-8276-9320","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":704504,"name":"Jonathan Schimmel","orcid":"0000-0002-6383-8308","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":27,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:46:28.747384Z","pmid":"34060168","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}