Posted by Elizabeth on April 14, 2001, at 4:09:29
In reply to Re: epilepsy?! Lisa, posted by Lisa Simpson on April 12, 2001, at 11:15:05
> Hi Elizabeth - thanks (again!) for your reply.
You're welcome, of course. :-)
> You obviously know a lot more about seizures than I do! Can I ask you, are you in the medical profession at all?
No. I've been reading up on them recently since the suggestion that I might be having them.
> Would you know, for instance - if someone had a seizure as a result of drinking too much alcohol (this is possible, I think?), would this show up in an examination at hospital?
If the cause was unknown, the hospital would do a tox screen, and alcohol is one of the drugs they screen for. However, whether it would show up would depend on how long ago the person had drunk the alcohol. For example, it may have been several hours before my boyfriend found me and got me to the hospital (and who knows how long it took them to get a blood (or urine?)) to send to the lab. By that time, alcohol could have been metabolised completely (IIRC, alcohol's rate of metabolism is complicated and depends on a lot of different things such as how much has been consumed, body weight, presence or absence of food in the stomach, etc.).
It might be a good idea for paramedics to give a breathalyser test in cases when they think that an unarousable patient might have been drinking. That way they would be more likely to get a useful result, and this kind of test is something that paramedics could do.
poster:Elizabeth
thread:58035
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010411/msgs/59773.html