Blood ethanol. A report of unusually high levels in a living patient

A young woman with an unusually high blood ethanol level (780 mg/100 ml) was admitted to the emergency room at the University of Colorado Medical Center following an automobile accident. This case is presented because of the exceptional degree of central nervous system tolerance exhibited by the patient and because her ethanol elimination rate appeared to follow first-order kinetics instead of the zero-order kinetics usually seen in the metabolism of ethanol in normal individuals.