CARBON MONOXIDE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21396, 20 October 1934, Page 7 (Supplement)

CARBON MONOXIDE

POISONING AND TREATMENT In the course of a three-year investigation by the United States Public Health Service and the Bureau of Mines, the discovery has been made that one of the results of carbon monoxide poisoning is swelling to the brain. Both carbon monoxide poisoning and oxygen deficiency were found in animal experiments to produce injuries to the brain cells and the central nervous system; hence the action of the carbon monoxide is simply that of suffocation or asphyxiation, and not a special poisoning effect, as some have believed in the past. The treatment, it is stated, should include the prompt administration of oxygen, or oxygen mixed with carbon dioxide, and further measures to relieve swelling and pressure on the brain. Blood transfusions, sometimes resorted to in the pajst, should be avoided, it is stated, since they tend to increase blood pressure. The correct procedure is to avoid giving all fluids, including water, and to ffeduce body fluids by such methods as catharsis, lumbar puncture or bleeding. Attention may be drawn, says the Dunlop Perdrian Bulletin, to a comparatively recent report by the United States National Safety Council, in which methylene blue is mentioned as an effective antidote by administering it into the veins in a one per cent, aqueous solution to the amount of 50 c.c. This authority states that repeated use of this generous dosage at the Park Emergency Hospital, San Francisco, has authenticated its effect on both carbon monoxide and cyanide victims.