Ambulance staff in Scotland saw a rise in emergency call outs on the first day of 2010, bosses said.
In the first seven hours of January 1, the Scottish Ambulance Service dealt with 2,247 calls to its 999 centres across Scotland. A large number of the call outs were for alcohol-related incidents.
The number of calls was up 5% on the same period last year, when the total was 2,141.
And ambulance staff have been praised for the coping "admirably" with such a busy workload.
Between midnight and 7am today the Scottish Ambulance Service's emergency medical dispatch centre in Cardonald, near Glasgow, dealt with 971 calls.
Meanwhile, staff at the Edinburgh centre handled 907 calls over the same period - 20% more than last year - and in Inverness there were 369 calls.
Extra crew and control room staff had been brought in to deal with the large number of call outs.
A Scottish Ambulance Service spokesman said: "Hogmanay is always our busiest night and this year was no different as we dealt with a high volume of calls across the country.
"Activity at times was intense, with most of the calls occurring between 2am and 4am. All staff on duty last night had to cope with an exceptional workload and they did so admirably."
