All CRNAs who take call in a medical center have had the challenge of caring for the intoxicated driver who arrives at the Hospital with a head injury. Imagine that both drivers sustained a traumatic head injury. One driver was intoxicated and the other was completely sober. Which driver is more likely to have a better outcome?
A study by Lustenberger, T, et al published in the Journal of Neurotrauma looked at outcomes of patients with traumatic brain injury. The aim of this study was to determine the impact of ethanol (ETOH) on the incidence of severe traumatic brain injury associated coagulopathy and to examine the effect of ETOH on in-hospital outcomes in patients sustaining sTBI. The incidence of admission coagulopathy, in-hospital complications, and mortality were compared between patients who were ETOH positive and ETOH negative.
The authors found that coagulopathy was significantly less frequent in the ETOH (+) patients compared to their ETOH (-) counterparts
For brain-injured patients arriving alive to the hospital, ETOH intoxication is associated with a significantly lower incidence of early coagulopathy and in-hospital mortality.
Click here to read an abstract and link to the original article by Thomas Lustenberger.
Thanks for the quick review of the research articles on this web site. You quickly state the important findings and then refer the reader back to the article if they want more. I wish other sites would tell you the important information without making you read through all the data.
This was a surprise to me. I would have thought that outcome would have been worse with intoxication. Thanks for this good article.