AS IF hospital emergency rooms aren鈥檛 already full of people who鈥檝e had too much to drink. Crazy as it sounds, alcohol may one day be given to people with brain injuries to help them recover.
The idea has arisen from a study of 38,000 people with head injuries, which found that those with alcohol in their blood were more likely to survive. For every 100 people who died when stone-cold sober, only 88 died with ethanol 鈥� the kind of alcohol in drinks 鈥� in their veins (Archives of Surgery, vol 144, p 865).
鈥淭he finding raises the possibility that administering ethanol to patients with brain injuries may improve outcome,鈥� conclude the investigators.
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Lead researcher Ali Salim of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles said he hoped a trial could be mounted, but not until the protective mechanism is understood. One possibility is that alcohol cuts the amount of adrenalin reaching the brain, which reduces inflammation.
Animal experiments suggest that relatively low doses of alcohol protect the brain from injury, but high doses increase the risk of death. And Salim stresses that booze is to blame for half of all injury cases.
鈥淎lcohol is and will always continue to be bad, since it contributes to over 40 per cent of traffic-related fatalities,鈥� he says.
The study also found that drinkers suffered more complications and more severe injuries than non-drinkers, even though the overall survival rate was higher.