December 26, 2006

A University of Toronto study says head trauma victims with “slight to moderate” levels of alcohol fare better than sober or really drunk victims. “Moderate” means up to 0.23% BAC in this study.
Not that you should be drinking and driving, but if you are in an accident, having a slight buzz on may help your odds of surviving if you get hit in the head. So says a report in The Archives of Surgery. Badly intoxicated drivers (and passengers) still fare worse than sober occupants. This may be yet another facet in the issue of whether alcohol in the bloodstream is good or bad for accident victims. Folklore has it that people with elevated alcohol levels are somehow “looser” in accidents. Medical research of the past two decades said that’s nonsense including, among other things, because it’s hard to determine the proper level of anesthesia to give a drunken patient. Now, there appears to be some benefit from having a bit of the alcohol in your bloodstream that possibly caused the accident.



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