Substance Use
Hospitalizations among people in substance use disorder treatment: a national record linkage study between 2010 and 2022 Alvaro Castillo-Carniglia* Alvaro Castillo-Carniglia Amaru Aguero Andrés González-Santa Cruza
Background. Substance use disorders are complex conditions, often requiring external triggers to evoke the need for seeking help. There is limited quantitative information on the actual incidence of negative health events influencing the decision to enter drug treatment. In this study, we analyze hospitalizations of individuals undergoing substance use disorder treatment (SUT) during 2010-2022 in Chile.
Methods. We conducted a population-based, retrospective cohort study by merging individual-level data of adults (18+) in publicly funded SUT programs with hospital discharge records from January 2010 to December 2022.
Results. Over the observed 13 years, there were about 160,000 admissions to treatment and nearly the same number of hospitalizations for individuals who underwent at least one treatment. When segmenting treatment admissions per year, the peak of hospitalizations for each sub-cohort (between 2010-2022) occurred in the same year they entered SUT.
However, this proportion decreased over the years, dropping from 20% to 8.8% in 2019 (pre-COVID-19), with an average 13.8% in the whole period. Among those who were hospitalized, the peak of treatment admissions occurred right after the discharge, with a median of 3 days in the difference between the day of SUT admission and hospital discharge (Figure 1). On average, external causes represent 4% of total hospitalizations among individuals in treatment, 3.2 times higher than hospitalizations in the general population; of these, 68% were for assault (codes X92-Y09), vs. 30% in the general population.
Conclusions. These preliminary findings showed a relative decline in hospitalizations as a trigger of drug treatment. As treatment availability increases in Chile, other sources of SUT admission (e.g., from primary health services or community outreach) are likely getting more prevalent.
Funding: ANID – Millennium Science Initiative Program – NCS2021_003 and ANID and Doctoral Scholarship National Doctorate/2023-21230172 (to AGSC)