RELATIONSHIP OF SHORT-TERM VERBAL MEMORY TO THE NEED FOR HYPERBARIC-OXYGEN TREATMENT AFTER CARBON-MONOXIDE POISONING

It has long been known that carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning has a spect rum of effects on cognitive functioning, including memory, perception, and attention. The current study reports the investigation of the eff ects of CO poisoning on short-term verbal memory, both rote and contex t aided. Impairment was measured before and after hyperbaric oxygen (H BO) treatment, Twenty-six patients who had been admitted for emergency treatment after exposure to significant CO poisoning were tested usin g a measure of short-term recall for word lists with no or varying deg rees of internal context-aided structure. Impairment of context-aided memory (but not rote memory) has been previously reported to be associ ated with low relative frontal volume in psychiatric patients. Carbon monoxide poisoning was significantly associated with impairment of con text-aided memory, with the degree of pretreatment impairment predicti ng the number of HBO treatments judged to be necessary on the basis of clinical monitoring of the patient. In patients with poisoning of mod erate severity, pretreatment performance in context-aided memory impro ved after the first HBO treatment, Tile implications of these findings for the effects of CO poisoning on frontal area function are discusse d. The memory measure used in this study appears to have considerable potential usefulness in the clinical assessment of the severity of: CO poisoning in patients treated in an emergency setting.