The Association Between Blood Alcohol Levels and the Severity of Head Trauma in Patients with Minor Head Trauma

Abstract

Introduction: Alcohol intake is associated with a wide variety of traumatic hazards. Although most authors accept that head injuries are frequently sustained in the state of alcohol intoxication, contributing to major post-traumatic disability and mortality, the specific effects of alcohol exposure on injury severity and subsequent outcomes remain controversial.

Materials and methods: This was a prospective cross-sectional study, which compared alcohol ingested and alcohol free patients presenting to the emergency department following minor head trauma according to their severity of head injury. Adult patients presenting to emergency department with minor head trauma, as defined by a GCS score of 15 and blunt trauma to the head are enrolled to the study consecutively. Patients with a blood alcohol level of >= 10mg/dL were defined as alcohol group and <10mg/dL were defined as non-alcohol group (control group). Cranial computed tomography results of two groups were compared.

Results: A total number of 424 patients included in the study and 208 of them composed alcohol group and 216 non-alcohol group. There were 19 patients having (45%) positive findings in their cranial computed tomographies. 3 (0.7%) of them had clinically important intracranial injuries while 16 (3.8%) had clinically unimportant intracranial injuries. There was no statistically significant difference in two groups according to patients having intracranial injuries (p=0.273). 22 of the patients needed neurosurgical or non-neurosurgical interventions. Patients in alcohol group needed more operative interventions compared to non-alcohol group (p<0.001).

Conclusion: Alcohol did not influence the severity of head trauma while it influenced the severity of whole body trauma. Although not reaching statistical significance, both patients with positive computed tomography results and patients who needed neurosurgical intervention were higher in alcohol-intoxicated patients. We believe that patients with alcohol intoxication need more elaborative evaluation than alcohol free patients in order to detect life-threatening complications in patients with mild head injury.