medicine - Woodruff Health Sciences Center - Emory University

Pulmonologist
DaviD guiDot,
a pioneer
in how excess
drinking affecTs
The lungs.
The
hidden
TruTh
abouT
alcohol
ChroniC
drinking
isn’t just
bad for
the liver,
it’s
hazardous
to the
lungs
By Valerie Gregg
Illustrations by Christopher Hickey
The genteel professor was admitted to the ER
wearing the academic uniform of a bygone
era—bow tie, suspenders, and suit coat. He had
suffered a heart attack, and by the second day of his hospitalization,
it became apparent that something else was seriously wrong. The
gentleman’s trembling hands and agitated affect worried the physi-
cians caring for him. But until his wife acknowledged her prominent
husband’s drinking problem, they didn’t know for sure that the patient
was suffering from alcohol withdrawal.
That omission could have cost the patient his life. “It’s important for
us to know if someone has a chronic drinking prob-
lem when they come to the hospital for any reason,”
says David Guidot, director of the Emory Alcohol
and Lung Biology Center at the Atlanta Veterans
Affairs Medical Center (VAMC). “When alcoholics
are in septic shock or have suffered severe trauma,
they are far more likely to develop acute respiratory
distress syndrome (ARDS).”
About half of ARDS patients die, their condition usually deteriorating
until they end up on ventilators in intensive care. ARDS is deadly for anyone. But clinical studies
at Emory and elsewhere have shown that, overall, the risk of developing and therefore dying of
this severe form of lung injury is four times higher for alcoholics than non-alcoholics.
8 EMORY MEDICINE
FALL 2008 9