The results reported here show that the non-medical use of drugs continues to place a burden on hospital emergency departments. These results provide an indication of the problem, but likely miss some of the impact because the focus of DAWN is on cases in which a person's own drug use contributes to the current reason for their visit to the emergency department. It is important to recognize that DAWN data do not measure the prevalence of drug use, but rather the health consequences of drug use expressed as emergency department visits.
Many factors can influence the estimates of emergency department visits.
Drug users may have visited emergency departments for a variety of reasons, some of which may have been life threatening. Others may have sought care at the emergency department for detoxification, because they were unable to gain admission to a drug treatment facility or because they needed medical certification before entering treatment. The DAWN data may reflect changes in hospital services or operations. That report clearly showed that since the late 1970's, there have been dramatic increases in the number of emergency departmentepisodes which DAWN identified as drug related. During the same period, the proportion of drug-related episodes which involved cocaine and heroin increased.