Showing posts with label alcoholism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alcoholism. Show all posts

Monday, April 18, 2011

Hung-over surgeons more error-prone | Reuters

Surgeons might want to steer clear of alcohol the night before operating, according to a new report that shows a hangover fuels errors during simulated surgery.

While there is no question about the immediate effects of alcohol on surgical skills, there aren't any rules for how much doctors can drink the day before going to the operating room.

"Historically, the medical profession has had a reputation for high rates of alcohol consumption," Anthony Gallagher, of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and colleagues write in the Archives of Surgery.

"It is likely that surgeons are unaware that next-day surgical performance may be compromised as a result of significant alcohol intake."

To measure the degree of that impairment, the researchers invited eight surgeons and 16 students out for a night on the town.

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Friday, March 11, 2011

Stanton Peele: Why We Should Give Serious Thought to Wet Shelters for Homeless Alcoholics

On the one hand, young people shouldn't act addicted -- because it can become a lifelong habit. On the other, we shouldn't regard young people as lifetime addicts due to their current situations (think Drew Barrymore); this is a horrible mistake that is more likely to exacerbate and prolong their problems (cf. Lindsay Lohan).

At the other end of the life cycle, there are people not likely to quit drinking et al. any time soon.

And what do we do about them? We can harangue them to join AA, go to the Salvation Army, and straighten up and fly right.

But here's another way of dealing with "incorrigibles":

Click on the "via" link for the rest of the article.

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Andrew Lopez, RN
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Tuesday, January 4, 2011

The Long and Winding Road to the Emergency Room - NYTimes.com

He was the first patient of the day, dropped off at the emergency room by the police or a family member — a man in his 50s, unshaved, stumbling, engulfed in the pungent aroma of alcohol.

Joseph Daniel Fiedler

When he blew into the breathalyzer’s strawlike tube, the readout was 0.18, more than twice the legal limit.

“I get seizures,” he said, referring to the dangerous reaction some people experience when they abruptly stop drinking. Then, as if to prove it, he held out trembling hands. Each bore the nicks and scars of a hard-lived life.

I looked at the beads of sweat on his brow, then down at his vital signs. Heart rate 120; blood pressure pushing 170/90. Despite his high alcohol level he was already in withdrawal. A medical detoxification — with drugs to counteract the sudden absence of alcohol in his system — was the right first step.

“Let’s admit him,” I said to his nurse. Because it was still early, there was a good chance a hospital bed would be available.

Her reply was apologetic but resigned: “He’s out of network.” I winced at my own naïveté. “Out of network,” a euphemism for “insurance will not pay,” was a roadblock I should have anticipated. A nuisance for many patients and would-be providers, it is ubiquitous in the second-class world of substance-abuse treatment, where insurance companies contract with selected hospitals and doctors to deliver care at bargain rates.

We called the few in-network hospitals within a broad radius. One had a bed. But before accepting my patient, the receiving doctor wanted a battery of tests, including an electrocardiogram and laboratory work, to rule out other medical concerns. It would be a day or so before the tests came back.

But the patient was already in withdrawal, I told the doctor. He couldn’t wait a day.

“Sorry,” he said flatly. “He

To read the complete article click on the above link:
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Andrew Lopez, RN
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38 Tattersall Drive, Mantua New Jersey 08051
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Friday, December 3, 2010

Graphic New York City Ads Warn Against Drinking

New ads for the New York City’s subway this holiday season are the cause for controversy. The ads are from the NYC Health Department and focus on the hazards of binge drinking. Today the Wall Street Journal questions wether people are actually receptive to the negative messages with the ads. Adam Duhachek, an associate professor of marketing at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, thinks that NYC might not have chosen the best strategy.
“The first is that people just shut down and don’t process the message at all,” says Duhachek. Show someone a nasty or unpleasant picture and they might say “I was having a perfectly nice day until I saw this, and now I’m not going to look at it.”

The I.U. researchers have also found that those ads tend to trigger a “defensive processing mechanism,” Duhachek says. When people are faced with a negative message about a behavior they engage in — like putting away several drinks in the course of an evening — they have to distance themselves from the chance of a bad outcome. (i.e. “You’d never find me slumped over in a subway station at 3am because I’m not that type of person.”)

People tend to think things will go much better for them than for the average person, Duhachek says. “We think our own personal greatness buffers us from all potential negative consequences.” Read full article.

Photos quoted from: NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

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Andrew Lopez, RN
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38 Tattersall Drive, Mantua New Jersey 08051
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Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Anonymous Doc:Patient is brought in by the cops, barely able to stand up by himself,

Here's a story:

Patient is brought in by the cops, barely able to stand up by himself, completely drunk. Blood alcohol level is almost 300. [80 is legal limit for drunk driving in most states.] Why we have to babysit drunks who don't actually have a medical problem we can treat is the larger question, but anyway...

We keep him overnight, next morning he's belligerent but doesn't seem drunk anymore. We're trying to discharge him. He doesn't want to be here anymore. We don't want him here. We're getting the papers together. We tell him it'll be an hour. He calms down.

An hour later, my intern goes to deal with the discharge. Comes back and tells me he doesn't seem right. Slurring his speech, can't sit up straight, etc.

I go and check on him. Yeah, he seems drunk again. We run his blood alcohol level again, and it's actually higher than when he came in, pushing 350.

We call hospital police to search his room. What did he sneak in here, and how?

They find nothing.

So we're baffled. My intern asks if something else might be going on, and I don't really have an answer. I don't know.

By habit, I squirt some sanitizing foam on my hands as I leave his room...

There's no foam in the dispenser.

It takes me a second.

No, can't be.

We look, shoved behind the door, the squeezed-dry, empty bag of hand sanitizer.

Alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

He drank a bag of hand sanitizer.

Awesome.

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Andrew Lopez, RN
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Sunday, November 21, 2010

Holding Their Liquor Makes Women Much Sicker than Men | LiveScience

Some women may be able to hold their liquor as well as men do, but there's no equality when it comes to whose health suffers more for it. Excessive alcohol use takes a higher toll on women's bodies, with a greater risk of liver, brain or heart damage, among other devastating conditions.

"We are very concerned about the fact that more young women are starting to drink in harmful ways, including binge drinking," said Dr. Deidra Roach of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

A decades-long study of data on more than 500,000 people nationwide indicated  women ages 21 to 23 were the only group whose binge drinking has increased. The research, reported in the July 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, showed a 30 percent jump between 1979 and 2006 in women who binge drink (that is, who down at least four alcoholic drinks in rapid succession).

The physical differences between the sexes play a significant role in how their bodies metabolize alcohol. Women have more body fat and less water in their systems than men do, as well as lower levels of an enzyme important in the breakdown of alcohol, according to the NIAAA. This means they experience the effects of drinking more quickly and for a longer time than men.

Of the estimated 17.6 million Americans who abuse alcohol, 5.3 million of them are female, according to the National Institutes of Health.

"Because women are smaller than men . . . the same amount of alcohol will be more concentrated in a woman's body than a man's body," said Roach, a health scientist administrator in the NIAAA's Division of Treatment and Recovery Research. "This means when a man and a woman drink the same amount of alcohol, in general, the woman's internal organs will be exposed to more alcohol than the man's."

A bevy of health problems

For women, the consequences of drinking include damage to organs and increased rates of chronic diseases.

  • Liver damage: Women develop alcohol-induced liver disease — including hepatitis and cirrhosis — over a shorter period of time and after consuming less alcohol than men, according to the NIAAA. It may be the female hormone estrogen that increases these risks.
  • Brain damage: MRI scans have shown that certain brain regions are smaller in women alcoholics than in other women and in men who are alcoholics, even after measurements are adjusted for head size, according to the NIAAA.
  • Heart disease: Many studies have shown a drink or two per day is heart-healthy. However, other research shows similar rates of severe damage to the heart muscle among women and men who are alcoholics, despite the fact that women who are alcoholics consume 60 percent less on average over their lifetimes, according to the NIAAA.
  • Breast cancer: The risks of developing breast cancer go up dramatically for heavy female drinkers. According to Loyola Marymount University, a large analysis showed the risk of developing the disease jumped 9 percent for each 10-gram increase (0.35 ounces) in daily alcohol consumption, up to 60 grams (2 ounces).
  • Violent injury: Not only are women put at greater risk of being assaulted, sexually or otherwise physically, by heavy drinking, according to the NIAAA, there has been an increase over the past decade in the proportion of women drivers to men drivers involved in fatal car crashes.

Unhealthy drinking habits place women at greater risk for a variety of adverse health and social consequences, including becoming infected with the AIDS virus, Roach said.

"We are seeing a growing body of evidence that binge drinking is a major risk factor for acquiring HIV among some groups of women," she said.

A disease that "sneaks up" on you

Even less serious conditions, such as sinus or bladder infections, can be brought on by alcohol abuse.

Joyce Rebeta-Burditt of Los Angeles said she had chronic sinus infections when she drank excessively 40 years ago. Rebeta-Burditt has since become a UCLA-certified alcohol recovery expert and the author of two books about recovering alcoholic women.

"Alcoholism is very dehydrating," she said. "I didn't appreciate how sick I was physically. I got IBS [irritable bowel syndrome] from alcohol irritation, and I still have bouts."

Rebeta-Burditt compared alcoholism to diseases such as diabetes that "sneak up on people," making it difficult to know when the line has been crossed.

"The difference is, most people know diabetes is an illness and don't know that alcoholism is, too," she said.

Roach said the NIAAA encourages health care professionals to screen women of all ages for problem drinking, because symptoms are so easily overlooked. For example, in older women alcohol may be a "hidden culprit" contributing to depression, frequent falling or heart failure, she said.

"Neither health professionals nor patients should ever simply assume that alcohol could not be a problem," Roach said.

This article was provided by MyHealthNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience.

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Andrew Lopez, RN
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Friday, May 4, 2007

Alcoholics Victorious, Healthcare Associations, Organizations

Alcoholics Victorious support groups:"Founded in 1948, Alcoholics Victorious support groups offer a safe environment where recovering people who recognize Jesus Christ as their "Higher Power" gather together and share their experience, strength and hope. AV meetings use both the 12 Steps and the Alcoholics Victorious Creed."
http://crc.iugm.org/

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See also:

National, State Nurse (Nursing) Organizations, http://www.4nursing.com/associations/

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Associations_22, Abuse, Abusive Behaviors, Abused, Direct Patient Care, http://www.nursefriendly.com/abuse/

+Associations_65, Addictions, Drug and Substance Abuse on The Nursefriendly: http://www.nursefriendly.com/addictions/

Associations_104, AIDS & HIV Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, AIDS & HIV Resources, http://www.4nursing.com/aids/

Associations_41, Blood Banks, Blood Donation, Apheresis Links, http://www.4nursing.com/blood/

Associations_44, Pregnancy, Obstetrics, & Gynecology (OB-GYN), Direct (Bedside Nursing) Patient Care, http://www.4nursing.com/obgyn

Canadian Associations, Cancer, Oncology, Malignancy, Tumors:
http://www.4nursing.com/canadian

Cardiac Associations, Cardiac & Cardiology Resources, http://www.4nursing.com/cardiac

Intravenous, Infusion Therapy Professional Associations, http://www.4nursing.com/intravenous

Medical Associations, Cancer, Oncology, Malignancy, Tumors, http://www.4nursing.com/medical

Renal, Kidney Associations, http://www.4nursing.com/renal

Respiratory Associations, http://www.4nursing.com/respiratory

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Andrew Lopez, RN
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38 Tattersall Drive, Mantua New Jersey 08051
http://www.4nursing.com info@nursefriendly.com ICQ #6116137, AOL "nursefriendly"
856-415-9617, (fax) 415-9618

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