Hospital gives man drip-feed of vodka

I wonder if they could give me Herradura Tequila instead?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071010/ap_on_fe_st/vodka_drip_1;_ylt=AhOCZ78WsjA4mkIeuUjFBKYE1vAI

Hospital gives man drip-feed of vodka
Wed Oct 10, 7:39 AM ET



BRISBANE, Australia - Doctors plugged an Italian tourist into a drip-feed of vodka to save him at a hospital in Australia that ran out of the medicinal alcohol it would normally have used for treatment.

The 24-year-old Italian, who was not further identified, was brought to Mackay Base Hospital in northeastern Queesland state and was diagnosed as having ingested a large quantity of ethylene glycol, a common ingredient of antifreeze that can cause renal failure.

Pure alcohol is often given in treating such cases because it can inhibit the toxic effects of ethylene glycol.

Mackay Base Hospital Dr. Pascal Gelperowicz said the man was given pharmaceutical-grade alcohol when he arrived, but that the hospital's supplies soon ran out.

"We quickly used all the available vials of 100 per cent alcohol and decided the next best way to get alcohol into the man's system was by feeding him spirits through a naso gastric tube," Dr. Gelperowicz said in a statement.

"The patient was drip-fed about three standard drinks an hour for three days in the intensive care unit," he said. "The hospital's administrators were also very understanding when we explained our reasons for buying a case of vodka."

Who knew there was ever a medical necessity for a 3-day bender?

:wow:

:hide:

(not the vodka, though).

I'm a nurse in the telemetry/critical care setting. Like the article says, alcohol drips are common for those that have OD'd on antifreeze.

Believe it or not, many chronic alcoholics who have run out of ways to get alcohol will intentionally ingest antifreeze because they know they will get on an ethylene drip.

There is actually one patient that comes to my mind that comes in with acute antifreeze poisioning about every 2 or 3 months. Knows the amount he has to ingest to get a drip (he has admitted this to the staff on numerous occasions), and then is a patient in the ICU for a few days on an alcohol drip. THe ethylene in his blood gives him the same feeling that drinking a case of beer does, etc.

I also deal with numerous, and I mean NUMEROUS alcohol withdrawal patients, sometimes as many as three a week or more. I have seen in the past where MD's actually write an Rx for X number of beers or X oz of liquor per day because the alcoholic we're treating is so far advanced in the disease that no amount of ativan or valium or haldol or any other sedative will keep them from going into DT's, which can and will be quite lethal to the chronic alcoholic. THe only way to prevent them from going into a series of deadly seizures (which lead to swelling and/or bleeding in the brain) is to supplement their medical sedation with alcohol.

Seriously.

shame those people didn't move on to pot from the booze.

I've seen OD's from heroin, meth, alcohol (very common), xanax, vicodin, tylenol, aspirin, antifreeze, other products

But I have never
ever
ever
ever
ever
ever
ever
ever
cared for a patient that OD'd on pot. Never.

Never cared for a patient that got stoned on reefer and then went and blew half his face off. Seen it with meth, though. Seen it with alcohol, though.

Never got a bunch of gang-bangers in the ICU at once who all got hoped up on reefer and went on a 10-person shooting spree. Seen it with liquor, though. Seen it with heroin. Seen it with PCP and coke, though.

never with pot.

Believe me when I tell you that a good number of nurses smoke pot on their times off. They are very careful to do it on days/nights when there is no chance of them having to come to work, and they don't do it at least 2 days before they have to work. Pot is very commonly used in the medical field. And most (as in, a far far majority) of the nurses AND doctors i work with believe that pot should be legalized and alcohol should be very harshly regulated.

Chronic pot users don't go through lethal seizures known as DT's.
Chronic alcohol users do.

Chronic pot users don't have to have a negative-airflow room and have nurses care for them wearing space-suits.
CHronic meth users do, because of the ones that cook up in their house, they're covered in these fucking absolutely poisionisous fumes from their meth lab. And those fumes do NOT come from pseudophederine (The other ridiculously quasi-illegal substance so now you have to sign a fucking ledger to get cold medicine). They come from the very legal poisionous shit these fuckers use to cook up meth with. But you don't see kerosene or rat poision (The real poisions) being illegal. Just the cold medicine.

Sorry.....nursy rant....me sorry

Thanks for doing what you do... and here's hoping for some sane drug laws, someday soon.

:hug:

How can you say anything bad about a drug that makes teenage boys driver slower?

I am right with you. Have you ever noticed that sometimes us nurses can be the most jaded and judgemental people sometimes?

When I floated to a medical floor we would routinly have to give massive amounts of Ativan or Librium to people who were killing themselves with ETOH. The reason that the ETOH works to solve a antifreeze OD is because they compete for the same place in your system and the ETOH wins.

Was just going to post essentially the same information. :hi:

I wonder if the hospital will use their standard 800% markup on the bill.

i wonder what the cost per shot would be

and we often joke about going down to the ER and getting the IV ETOH when we are hung over.

but the IV ETOH is more fun!