Moderate Alcohol Helps You Survive Brain Injury

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Main Category: Neurology / Neuroscience
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Article Date: 19 Dec 2006 - 7:00 PDT

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A Canadian study has surprised scientists by suggesting that brain injured patients with low to moderate blood alcohol have a better survival chance than those with zero or high blood alcohol.

The study is published in the Archives of Surgery and was led by Dr Homer Tien, trauma surgeon at the Sunnybrook Health Science Centre in Toronto.

Dr Tien and his team looked at 16 years of trauma registry data from 1988 to 2003 describing patients admitted with traumatic brain injury (TBI) due to blunt head trauma, resulting from a road accident for example. They analysed the results of 1158 patients according to their blood alcohol level: None (0 milligrams per decilitre, 0mg/dL), low to moderate (under 230mg/dL), and high (230mg/dL and above).

The researchers performed statistical tests to work out the survival rates of the three groups. The results suggest that severely brain injured patients with high blood alcohol are more likely to die from their injuries than those with zero blood alcohol.

However, those with low to moderate blood alcohol stand a significantly better chance of survival than those with no alcohol in their blood.

The researchers are not sure how to explain the results. They suggest it could be because the initial brain trauma can develop into a secondary brain injury which is hard to manage when blood alcohol is high. Patients with high blood alcohol are less likely to respond to rescucitation.

Perhaps low blood alcohol (as opposed to none) actively reduces secondary brain injury, which together with the increased likelihood of successful rescitation means survival is more likely. Further research is needed, but the early indications are that alcohol may have a part to play in helping patients recover from severe brain injury.

Dr Tien and his team describe the results as a "paradox" and are careful to point out that:

"the study only describes the effect of alcohol on the brain after injury occurs and I’d like to stress that alcohol remains the leading cause of preventable trauma deaths and dramatically increases the likelihood of injury and fatal injury.”

Up to 50 per cent of people admitted to hospital with trauma were drunk at the time they got injured.

"Association Between Alcohol and Mortality in Patients With Severe Traumatic Head Injury."
Homer C. N. Tien, MD, FRCSC; Lorraine N. Tremblay, MD, PhD; Sandro B. Rizoli, MD, PhD; Jacob Gelberg, BSc; Talat Chughtai, MD; Peter Tikuisis, PhD; Pang Shek, PhD; Frederick D. Brenneman, MD.
Arch Surg. 2006;141:1185-1191.

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Written by: Catharine Paddock
Writer: Medical News Today
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

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