Resumo

BEJARANO OROZCO, Julio  e  SAENZ ROJAS, Mario Alberto. Consumo de drogas en personas ingresadas en la sala de emergencias del Hospital San Juan de Dios: Costa Rica, 1992 - 1996. Rev. costarric. salud pública [online]. 1999, vol.8, n.14, pp.20-31. ISSN 1409-1429.

This paper represents five years of investigation at emergency rooms of the national's major general hospital. One week a year, from 1992 to 1996, senior medical students applied a drug consumption instrument to every patient attended in ER. This research was part of the Ínter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission/OAS's Project on Drug Consumption Surveillance, carried out in emergency rooms for Central America, Panama and Dominican Republic. The results revealed that this type of investigation is an useful complement of other type of estudies, like national surveys, because it represents one manner of obtaining relevant data on groups not attended by conventional research. Some significant outputs stood out that the drug use age of onset was minor than averages found in the general population and that active consumption of illicit drugs was very important in this group of patients. Some gender differences are also described.