Blood alcohol concentration
| Blood alcohol content | |
|---|---|
| Medical diagnostics | |
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| LOINC | 5639-0, 5640-8, 15120-9, 56478-1 |
Blood alcohol content (BAC), also called blood alcohol concentration, blood ethanol concentration, or blood alcohol level, is most commonly used as a metric of alcohol intoxication for legal or medical purposes. Blood Alcohol Content is the legal name for BAC but Blood Alcohol Concentration is sometimes used for simpler description.
Blood alcohol concentration is usually expressed as a percentage of ethanol in the blood in units of mass of alcohol per volume of blood or mass of alcohol per mass of blood, depending on the country. For instance, in North America a BAC of 0.1 (0.1% or one tenth of one percent) means that there are 0.10 g of alcohol for every dL of blood.
To calculate estimated peak blood alcohol concentration (EBAC), a variation, including drinking period in hours, of the Widmark formula was used. The formula is:
where :
Regarding metabolism (MR) in the formula; Females demonstrated a higher average rate of elimination (mean, 0.017; range, 0.014-0.021 g/210 L) than males (mean, 0.015; range, 0.013-0.017 g/210 L). Female subjects on average had a higher percentage of body fat (mean, 26.0; range, 16.7-36.8%) than males (mean, 18.0; range, 10.2-25.3%). Additionally, men are, on average, heavier than women but it is not strictly accurate to say that the water content of a person alone is responsible for the dissolution of alcohol within the body, because alcohol does dissolve in fatty tissue as well. When it does, a certain amount of alcohol is temporarily taken out of the blood and briefly stored in the fat. For this reason, most calculations of alcohol to body mass simply use the weight of the individual, and not specifically his/her water content. Finally, it is speculated that the bubbles in sparkling wine may speed up alcohol intoxication by helping the alcohol to reach the bloodstream faster. A study conducted at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom gave subjects equal amounts of flat and sparkling Champagne which contained the same levels of alcohol. After 5 minutes following consumption, the group that had the sparkling wine had 54 milligrams of alcohol in their blood while the group that had the same sparkling wine, only flat, had 39 milligrams.
Examples:
Note: This chart defines a drink as 14g of ethanol, while the formula defines a drink as 10g of ethanol.
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Wikipedia