Are drains useful for lumbar disc surgery?
Occurrence of hematoma in the epidural space is common after lumbar disc surgery even if meticulous hemostasis has been achieved. Insertion of a drain decreases both the incidence and the size of hematoma on the first postoperative day as detected by MRI. This may have practical implications for the prevention of significant postoperative fibrosis and obtaining better surgical outcome.
A positive serum alcohol level was associated with a significantly lower pneumonia rate in isolated, moderate to severe TBI patients. This may explain the observed mortality reduction in TBI patients who test positive for alcohol. Additional research is warranted to investigate the potential therapeutic implications of this association.