1 Department of Pediatrics, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School of Dallas, 5323 Harry Hines Boulevard, Dallas, Texas
Acute alcoholism is an important cause of morbidity and mortality in adults. The signs and symptoms of acute ethanol intoxication and the metabolic fate of ethanol in the body are well known.1 There are a few case reports of alcohol-induced hypoglycemia in young children2 and also case reports of withdrawal symptoms in infants of alcoholic mothers.3 Yet there is very little in the literature on the course, treatment, and prognosis of children with acute poisoning due to accidental alcohol ingestion. This report is designed to call attention to this entity, to describe a case whose blood alcoholic level was, as far as we know, the highest recorded in the pediatric literature in a survivor, to Suggest a mode of therapy, and, hopefully, to awaken pediatricians to thew possibility of ethanol intoxication in young children.