When I heard that the sleep aid Ambien was having some success waking up coma patients,I was immediately filled with questions. One of my first thoughts was how did they discover that? Why would anyone give a coma patient sleeping pills? and of course the more standard thought,how would it work? The answer to the first was an accidental sort of discovery,the coma patient was thrashing around and the doctor prescribed the Ambien in hopes of calming them into a more restful state. The how it works makes sense too. Ambien comes with warnings that it may cause bizarre sleepwalking,sleepeating,sleeptalking,even sleepdriving,aka "paradoxical excitation". These accidental discoveries are leading to more research in comas but at the present it isn't expected to help more than 10% of the patients treated.
No comments:
Post a Comment