Interesting. I wasn’t aware that Ambien could lead to victims of severe brain damage to regain consciousness:
A judge has rejected a family’s plea that a 53-year-old woman in a vegetative state should be allowed to die.He has ordered instead that she should be given a drug that could wake her up.
Theoretically the patient could then spend the rest of her life severely disabled and aware of her condition.
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- The most-kissed woman of all time
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If it works, does that make it right? Because we can, should we, always?
Now, this is most interesting. A high court judge in The UK advises Ambien in order to lift poor souls from the depths of PVS [ permanent vegetative states. ]
The original studies using zolpidem-Ambien- did indeed have some positive results at Surry.
As an anesthesiologist/pain specialist-here in the states, it never occurred to me to use Ambien on the many brain-injured vegetaive-type patients that I have encountered over the years in hospital ICU’s.
I am sure that the nurses and administrators would have escorted me to the front door.
I’m still in the archaic frame of mind that allows me to prescribe Ambien for sleep, on the often touted claim that patients wake up without a ‘hangover.’ In reality, this is a bit of a myth.
Interestingly – and many readers may be unaware of this – by stimulating the opioid receptors we can experimentally enhance pre-ischemic conditioning [ PIC .]
When we pre-ischemically condition an organ, such as the heart, we allow that organ to be able to resist a final traumatic ischemic causing event in order to prevent organ damage.
Perhaps His Honour [ and I mean no disrespect ] would consider having the High Court remand to all physicians who treat ischemic heart disease to place all of these angina-impaired patients on a hefty dose of OxyContin, or some other opioid preparation – so that the myocardial muscle can remain free of the ravages of the “Coronary Steal.”
That would certainly keep those little busy bees from the narcotics unit, down at police headquarters, with plenty of work to do.
Imagine all of the millions of heart patients in this country and abroad taking round the clock morphine to prevent MI.
Anything is possible through science.
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