Chicago DUI lawyer comments on alcohol saving the lives of head injury victims

This Chicago DUI lawyer is a lot like many of you. Over the years you hear about tragic auto accidents. Inevitably, one thing sticks out for me. The number of times the person who is drunk, whether they are a passenger or the driver, walks away from the wreckage with barely a scratch.

You have probably heard that alcohol makes the body loser on impact in these accidents or some such tale. No one seems to know why but there's no question we keep seeing it again and again. Now comes research to suggest that victims of head injury have significantly higher rates of survival if they also have alcohol in their system, compared to head injury victims who have no alcohol in their bodies.

September 21, New York, New York

Head-injury patients are less likely to die if they have drunk alcohol, though they experience more complications, a study suggests.

The researchers used a national trauma database to review the cases of 38,019 patients with moderate to severe traumatic brain injuries who had been tested for alcohol when brought to the hospital in 2000-5. For every 100 patients with severe brain injuries who tested negative for alcohol and died, only 88 patients with alcohol in their bloodstream died, a statistically significant 12 percent difference, according to the study, which appears in the Sept. 21 issue of Archives of Surgery.

If the findings are supported by future studies, they may lead to efforts to determine whether “there is a role for giving people a small amount of alcohol after they get injured,” said the paper’s first author, Dr. Ali Salim, an associate professor of surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

He added: “We are not trying to say the alcohol is good, so go out and drink when you drive. That’s the last message we want to put out there.”

I think this study holds the key to explaining how those that are drunk just seem to walk away from car accidents. My interest is piqued.