Visits to hospital emergency rooms in Boston plummeted during the city鈥檚 most nail-biting sports moments, according to a group of local doctors.
The team found that visits went down to as little as 80% of the average for the key Boston Red Sox games that attracted the most TV viewers. But ER visits rose above the average for games that had fewer viewers.
鈥淭he surprising finding was the direct linear relationship,鈥� says John Brownstein of the Boston Children鈥檚 Hospital in Massachusetts, US, who led the team.
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The researchers compared the number of visits to six emergency departments in the Boston area during 11 key baseball games in 2004 to the average number of visits on that day and at the same time in previous years, and plotted them against the number of TV viewers for those games.
Red Sox victory
A game against the New York Yankees, where the Red Sox鈥檚 victory guaranteed them a place in the US World Series, was watched on TV by 55% of the public in the greater Boston area, and coincided with a dip of 15% in emergency room visits.
But during another Yankees game, where it was taken for granted that the Sox would lose and only 30% of viewers tuned in, emergency room visits were almost 15% above average.
鈥淲e had a hunch that if we would see an effect anywhere, it would be baseball,鈥� says Brownstein. Last year, the Sox won the annual baseball championship for the first time since 1918, making the 2004 World Series an extremely important event for Boston and an ideal case for the study.
One explanation for the startling correlation is that while people are watching TV, they are sedentary and fairly safe. 鈥淧eople are at home watching the games so they are probably not getting into trouble,鈥� explains Brownstein.
Non-emergencies
Another is that people who attend ER are often not experiencing a medical emergency in the true sense of the word. 鈥淭here is clearly some discretionary component that explains the timing,鈥� says co-author Kenneth Mandl of Harvard Medical School.
He emphasises that this does not necessarily mean people are misusing the system. GPs do not work nights or weekends and while some conditions can wait a couple of hours, they cannot wait days. 鈥淲e are not saying people are holding off from gunshot wounds,鈥� says Brownstein.
The emergency room can also be the only way that some people can get health care. 鈥淢any people aren鈥檛 insured in this country,鈥� says Ben Reis, a co-author also at the Boston Children鈥檚 Hospital. 鈥淪ometimes the only access to care they have is through the emergency room.鈥�
To tease the two factors apart, Donald Redelmeier of the Sunnybrook and Women鈥檚 College 午夜福利1000集合 Sciences Centre in Toronto, Canada 鈥� who has looked at the effects of football games on road accidents 鈥� suggests that the researchers provide data for why people check into the emergency rooms at different times.
Die-hard fans
Although a study in 1994 showed that emergency visits seemed to fall on the days when there was a football game, Brownstein鈥檚 team is the first to pinpoint the exact times of the games, and to compare that with the exact volume of visits during that time
But there is a third factor that the researchers, all self-confessed Red Sox fans, also suggest 鈥� that Red Sox fans are exceptionally tough. 鈥淲e challenge scientists in other cities to come up with creative ways to show that their fans are similarly die-hard,鈥� says Brownstein.
Published in Annals of Emergency Medicine on Monday.
