Surgeons Discover That Vitamin C And Other Antioxidants Reduce Infections, Pulmonary Failure, And Abdominal Wall Complications In Trauma Patients

Many trauma victims, who survive their initial injury, will often die of multiple-organ failure following an operation. At the 2008 Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons (ACS), Bryan A. Cotton, MD, FACS, presented a study which reported  that "implementation of high-dose antioxidant protocol (vitamins C, E, and selenium) resulted in a reduction of pulmonary complications, in general, as well as infectious complications, including central line and catheter-related infections."

Dr. Cotton, who is assistant professor of surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, also observed a remarkable decrease in abdominal wall complications including abdominal compartment syndrome and surgical site infections. When an abdominal wound opens up, the result is not just an infection to be treated with antibiotics, he explained. The wounds need packing and some of them open up to the point where they have to be reconstructed with expensive agents.

"This is a high mortality, high morbidity, may-never-return-to-work-again problem in a young healthy patient," he said. "Abdominal wall complications are enormous, yet we noted a reduction in some of these complications with implementation of antioxidants. Importantly, the biggest difference was in those patients who had a predicted mortality exceeding 50 percent."

Immediately prior to completing this study, Dr. Cotton and his colleagues at Vanderbilt demonstrated that this same high-dose antioxidant protocol resulted in a stunning 28 percent reduction in mortality in acutely injured patients. In addition, patients' length-of-stay in both the hospital and intensive care unit (ICU) were reduced. After the team observed the reduction in mortality after initiating the protocol, they wanted to learn exactly how antioxidants might work. It is all related to addressing the overwhelming oxidative stress, Dr. Cotton said.

He explained that any time a patient has an acute injury, an operation, or some kind of infection, it places a huge stress on the body. This stress can result in injured oxygen molecules called free radicals being released in the body. These molecules roam around, causing considerable damage at the cellular level. This damage is called oxidative stress.

Dr. Cotton said that past research by some renowned scientists in this field has shown a depletion in the store of antioxidants in critically stressed, critically injured patients. Essentially, it appears that antioxidants work....

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