Booze Therapy: Giving Alcohol to Patients with Head Injury

1. Gary
   September 22nd, 2009 at 7:50 pm

   Crack your head? Here, celebrate with a drink or two. Cheers!

2. Jessie Lee
   September 22nd, 2009 at 8:28 pm

   Do adjust your self, about one or two. It's better!

3. quiverbuzz
   September 22nd, 2009 at 8:49 pm

   I am compelled to agree! I had a nasty fall a couple of weeks ago. While blaming no-one but myself, I was completely memory-loss drunk. I remember being in the pub with my mates, definitely worse for wear, then quick pan to yelling obscenities at the paramedics in the ambulance whisking me to A&E. No recollection of how I was injured, or how it came about! But apparently I had had a pretty nasty faceplant somewhere along the line, which neccessitated stitches, but the head trauma - judged by questioning and eye examination - revealed nothing out of the ordinary. I thought I was just lucky, but given this, maybe the booze served a purpose..

4. Johnny Cat
   September 22nd, 2009 at 9:15 pm

   This has been a fact that drives (npi) the MADD campaigns so well. A very high percentage of drunk driving accidents see the drunk as the survivor, due to inebriated nerves. They're more flexible.

5. Courageous Grace
   September 22nd, 2009 at 10:20 pm

   Once I heard that the sober driver tends to tense when they see an unavoidable accident. The tension and rigidity in their body makes them less likely to "roll" with the flow of motion in an accident. Don't remember where I heard that from and I could be very wrong but it seems to make sense.

6. c0ldfish
   September 23rd, 2009 at 9:04 am

   yes, i do hope these researchers are taking the rag doll effect into account. I.E. the tendency for drunk drivers to physically endure crashes better. I.E. "rolling" with the flow.

7. OnTheWagon
   September 23rd, 2009 at 10:51 am

   Another reason drunk people survive accidents is because many drunk driving accidents occur when the car driven by the drunk driver T-bones the car driven by the non-drunk. Being T-boned is much more likely to kill you than being the driver of the car that does the T-boning, regardless of anyone's state of inebriation.

8. Foreigner1
   September 23rd, 2009 at 1:26 pm

   I always believed that drunks survive horrible falls and accidents because they are like loose puppets. That it was the flexibility, the just not really resisting that made them somehow stay more or less in one piece.

9. EC
   September 23rd, 2009 at 2:21 pm

   I wonder if this would be more tempting for the nurse giving the "treatment" to either injure themself or just say screw it and join the patient.

10. Dr Jane
    September 27th, 2009 at 12:58 am

    The "rag-doll" effect was noted in Chinese texts predating Christianity- in the context of "falling from a carriage" it is said that "the drunkard escapes injury because his spirit is complete" which is an old fashioned way of saying the person rolls with the fall and doesn't tense up to resist it. Sorry I can't remember which ancient chinese author wrote this.

    The effect being examined here is a different one- on the brains inflammatory response to injury- the right dose of ethanol inhibits this.

    Alcohol intoxication is responsible for the vast majority of serious head injury, so drinking before an accident, even if it does reduce neural injury, is not on the whole protective- (you are about 12% less likely to die if you have a head injury while you have ethanol in your blood stream, but you are at least twice as likley to get a head injury in the first place if you are intoxicated).

    Based on this research, it would appear that administering the ideal amount of ethanol in an emergency department setting may be able to reduce neural injury after a head injury. However drinking alcohol at home as a treatment for head injury is likely to result in a concussed person lapsing into unconsiousness and dying from intercranial bleeding. The best advice if you have a head injury is not to drink alcohol, and to get to a hospital.

    Dr Jane.

11. Cheryl Howard
    October 29th, 2009 at 5:28 am

    I have known several kind of brain injury rehabilitation but the booze therapy is really fascinating. Is it truly effective in treating brain injuries?

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