Alcohol may protect trauma patients from later complications

Injured patients who have alcohol in their blood have a reduced risk for developing cardiac and renal complications, according to a study from the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. Among patients who did develop complications, those with alcohol in their blood were less likely to die.
‘After an injury, if you are intoxicated there seems to be a substantial protective effect,’ says UIC injury epidemiologist Lee Friedman, author of the study. ‘But we don