A recent study has revealed a good reason to avoid binge drinking: it affects the body’s immune system response to injury.
According to a Loyola University Health System study, researchers found that a high blood-alcohol level complicates the trauma care of patients with bone injuries.
Other studies have already found that alcohol in trauma patients is associated with longer hospital stays, higher infection rates, higher injury severity scores and an increased mortality rate. Researchers have attributed these findings, in part, to changes alcohol causes in the immune response.
Following an injury such as a broken bone, the immune system revs up, producing an inflammatory response. But, says orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Benjamin William Sears (first author of the Loyola study), in cases of severe injury or multiple traumatic injuries, the inflammatory response can overwhelm the body and cause life-threatening conditions such as multiple organ failure and acute respiratory distress syndrome.
One of the factors to be considered when determining the best time to perform surgery is the inflammatory response. If the response is too great, the surgery can be delayed.
A measure of the inflammatory response is chemical markers in the blood, but findings from the Loyola study indicate that measuring such blood markers may be misleading when alcohol is involved.
According to the research, binge alcohol exposure can suppress the inflammatory response, although it appears to boost the inflammatory response in the lungs. This means that measuring markers in the blood of intoxicated patients could give doctors a false sense of security in terms of scheduling surgery.