Drinking can raise an older adult’s risk for brain bleeding if they experience a fall, a new study finds.
The risk remains if the person isn’t a regular drinker, according to a study published July 31 in Journal of the American College of Emergency Physicians Open.
The risk of a brain bleed is higher the more an older adult drinks. Weekly drinking, for instance, doubled the risk of brain bleeding after a fall, while daily drinks made it 2.5 times more likely for a fall to lead to brain bleeding, the data showed.
The team evaluated data on 3,128 people aged 65 and up. Of them, 18.2% reported drinking; 1.9% drank weekly, 6% drank daily and 10.3% had a drink occasionally. All of the participants were treated at one of two trauma centers in Palm Beach County, Florida, for a head injury sustained during a fall.
All the participants underwent a head CT after they fell and experienced head trauma. Of them, 13.5% had a brain bleed, also known as an intracranial hemorrhage.
Brain bleeds occurred in nearly 20% of those who said they drank occasionally, 22% of those who drank weekly and 25% of daily drinkers, compared with only 12% of those who didn’t use alcohol, the data showed.
“One of the unexpected findings in our study was the strong dose-response relationship between reported alcohol use and intracranial hemorrhage,” Richard Shih, MD, a study author and a professor of emergency medicine with the Florida Atlantic University College of Medicine, said in an article published on HealthDay.
“It’s also worth noting that as individuals age, the effects of alcohol are increased,” Shih said. “This is because older adults often have a higher percentage of body fat to body water ratio, thus increasing the concentration of alcohol in the bloodstream. Furthermore, alcohol metabolism decreases with age, exacerbating this effect, because older adults don’t process alcohol as efficiently as they used to.”
Alcohol use should be considered an important risk factor for falls, the researchers wrote.
