Doctors treat alcohol poisoning with 15 cans of beer

After drinking a large quantity of adulterated liquor, a 48-year-old man suffered severe alcohol poisoning. The doctor was rather unusually treated.

It sounds absurd at first: In order to cure a man of his severe alcohol poisoning, his doctors give him even more alcohol, a can of beer per hour. But the procedure works: After 15 hours and consequently 15 cans of beer, the man can leave the hospital, except for a nasty hangover he has no more discomfort.

This is how Le Van Lam, head of the intensive care unit of Quang Tri Hospital in the North Vietnamese province of the same name, tells the daily "Tuoi Tre News ." The 48-year-old patient was admitted unconscious and in a life-bredohal state on December 25, he said, having previously drunk large amounts of alcohol at a party. Presumably, this was substandard liquor contaminated with methanol.

In Asian countries, it happens again and again that people fall seriously ill or die after eating cheap adultered fuss. Methanol is produced when it is not properly used when distilling alcohol. When the liver then tries to detoxify the body from alcohol, the methanol is converted to formaldehyde and formic acid. This can damage the nerve cells, lead to blindness and even death.

In their unusual treatment, doctors in Vietnam used a trick to prevent the conversion of methanol: They otherwise employed the liver by administering ethanol, meaning "normal " alcohol, to the patient in the form of beer. The dangerous methanol is then not broken down in the first place, but is gradually excreted by breathing and urine.

The emergency physician Hans-Jörg Busch from the University Hospital Freiburg told the German Press Agency dpa: "The therapy with 15 cans of beer is rather unusual, but easy to understand. Perhaps the Vietnamese colleagues had no other alcohol at hand. "However, the type of alcohol does not necessarily matter, according to the professor. "Much more importantly, the therapy is initiated immediately. "