A friend of mine just died from “Acute Alcohol Poison”.
What exactly is that?
How does one die from it?
It generally disrupts the nervous system, particularly the conduction system of the heart, causing fatal arrhythmias to occur, IIRC
Qadgop
I think you mean Acute Alchohol Poisoning. It means your friend drank much much more alchohol than their body was designed to process. Thus, it poisoned them, resulting in the effects described by Qadgop. I read in a not-very reputable source that if the average person drank a fifth of 80 proof liquor in a half hour and could keep it down, alchohol poisoning, and possibly death, would result.
I was wondering if this was something done in one sitting, or done over time. Can you get alchohol poisoning and live?
IANADoctor, but while it is possible to kill yourself slowly with alchohol, usually this is not what is called “acute poisoning.” I believe the term “acute poisoning” is a synonym for “Drug overdose” if that helps you put it in a context. I believe it is possible to survive acute alchohol poisoning, if treated promptly by health care professionals. I’m afraid I don’t know the details. Hopefully a doctor, nurse, or EMT on this board can explain further.
BTW, I’m very sorry for your loss.
acute poisoning generally would equal an overdose. Basically alcohol is a depressant. If you were to ingest enough…
per mosby paramedic textbook – At toxic levels. hypoventilation, hypotension, hypothermia. It is also quite possible that due to the above listed symptions to easily slip into coma, cardiac disrythmia, and ultimately death. Aspiration would also be a concern if someone was to vomit and breath it in.
Qadgop –
isint ETOH a CNS depressant. Therefor it would not have any effect of the electrical conduction of the heart that is independant of the CNS – the SA node would idealy (non diseased heart) continue on kicking at its own rate. I was under the impression that the CNS depression would lead more to depression of the phrenic never, causing hypoventalation and hypoxia. Wouldn’t the ensuing hypoxia cause more of the irritability than the ETOH in the bloodstream?
Qadgop –
isint ETOH a CNS depressant. Therefor it would not have any effect of the electrical conduction of the heart that is independant of the CNS – the SA node would idealy (non diseased heart) continue on kicking at its own rate. I was under the impression that the CNS depression would lead more to depression of the phrenic never, causing hypoventalation and hypoxia. Wouldn’t the ensuing hypoxia cause more of the irritability than the ETOH in the bloodstream?
AFAI recall, ethanol is also arrhythmiogenic, in addition to the other effects you describe. Certainly hypoxia would aggravate this, but I do believe it acts directly on the conducting system. Too lazy to look it up now.
hours of working in a call center leads to time to goof off…
I was unable to find any relation of ETOH poisoning to disrythmia, but that was a less than exhaustive search of the merck manual…I’ll also ask around/make a better search when time avails (I’m getting off now)
the one link I was able to find with symptoms
http://www.merck.com/pubs/mmanual/tables/307tb3b.htm
Shizzit. Why do you people have to post things like this on nights when I’ve consumed way too much C=OH? Bastages. 
You’d better hope I don’t choke to death on vomit (mine or anybody else’s) or it’ll be on your head!
Well Kinoons a Google search using “cardiac ethanol arrhythmia” turned up quite a few cites implicating ethanol in atrial fibrillation, SVT, and lowering the threshold for VT/VF, but I could not find any solid evidence for what causes death with acute alcohol intoxication. The most common presumption is that it’s hypoxia from respiratory depression, with fatal arrhythmia from a combination of that and ethanol. But I’ve been unable to unearth how you die if you’re on a vent and well-oxygenated with too much ethanol on board.
Experiment: Intubate and ventilate a lab animal, protect their airway, pavulonize them so they don’t extubate themselves, then increase their blood alcohol content via IV drip, and see what happens. I still think the stuff diddles with the autonomic nervous system. I’m sure some “dedicated researcher” somewhere must have done the above experiment on dogs, but I’ve been unable to locate it yet. God forbid we duplicate that kind of research unnecessarily.
But for all practical (read real world) purposes, I suspect that you’re right, the big problem is hypoxia from either respiratory depression, along with vomiting and aspirating, which results in most demises. Sad, and messy for the survivors.
So I can’t give you all the details.
In essence: Your friend died because he/she had ingested a quantity of alcohol that his/her body was unable to metabolize. It’s important to remember that all alcohols, in any amount, are, to some degree, toxic. (Like, for example, alkaloids. Very toxic but that doesn’t stop me from ingesting caffeine.)
However, we can generally handle small quantities by a nifty metabolic process that breaks down the alcohol and elimates from your system. In order to achieve this bio-chemical feat, your body has to pull enzymes and such (O, for my textbook!) from other important processes. Too much alcohol in your body and the system crashes. Some people go blind, others get wet brain and some die.
Not only is it possible to have alcohol poisoning and live, it is such a common occurance that there is a technical name for the condition. It is called a hangover.
This is taken from ‘Organic Chemistry’ 4th ed. by L.G. Wade.
(http://cw.prenhall.com/bookbind/pubbooks/wade)
"Although it is the least toxic alcohol, ethanol is still a poisonous substance. When someone is suffering from a mild case of ethanol poisoning, we say that he or she is intoxicated… To detoxify ethanol, the liver produces an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH.)
Alcohol dehydrogenase catalyzes an oxidation: the removal of two hydrogen atoms from the alcohol molecule. The oxidizing agent is called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD.) NAD exists is two forms: the oxidized form, called NAD+, and the reduced form, called NADH… ethanol is oxidized to acetaldehyde, and NAD is reduced to NADH. A subsequent oxidation, catalyzed by another enzyme, converts acetaldehyde to acetic acid, a normal metabolite."
Why you shouldn’t drink methanol:
“Methanol is oxidized first to formaldehyde and then to formic acid. Both of these compounds are more toxic than methanol itself.” Formic acid can cause blindness and death.
Yes, I am a geek.
Qadcop, usually you’re on the money. However, in this case, I would suggest that alcohol doesn’t usually lead to a fatal arrhythmia. I would suggest that acute alcoholic hepatitis and acute alcoholic pancreatitis may be more common forms of death from alcohol than VF/VT. Of course, most alcohol deaths are the chronic kind.
Dr. Pap, MD.
This is going to sound like such a stupid question, but I remember reading in one of my poison’s information books years ago that ethanol is given to neutralise methanol poisoning.
Presumably, early enough medical intervention could prevent death from acute alcohol poisoning - I’d guess largely by supporting vital functions while the body detoxifies - so I’d be interested in knowing what the current recommendations are where acute alcohol poisoning is suspected (almost every death, I’ve heard of where someone went on a binge was due to aspiration). At what point should I seek medical intervention for someone who’s drunk and passed out, rather than leaving them to “sleep it off”?
you would have thought that a search as simple as google would have crossed my mind
I also did a MDConsult search once I got home, and was again unable to come up with any direct relationship between arrhythmia and ETOH. every text that MDconsult references relates CNS depression was the main problem with ETOH overdose (note, I didnt persue acute alcoholic hepatitis or acute alcoholic pancreatitis)
Also, there was a really neat article about EMS being able to RO spinal injury so we dont blindly board everyone.
Oh, ethanol is given IV to patients who consume methanol. The reason being that ethanol has an affinity for the enzyme that breaks down alcohol abut 9 times stronger than methanol. This stops the break down of the methanol.
Yeah, and the last time I mentioned that, the thread got locked!
I just posted it may be 15 minutes ago…give them time…