News for the Stupid: Cocaine May Cause a Heart Attack

You think people would have figured this out oh, about 30 years ago.

Len Bias dropped dead of a heart attack in June 1986 because he overdosed on cocaine!

Hello!

Younger ER patients with heart attack symptoms should be asked if they've recently used cocaine, which can cause similar chest pain, the American Heart Association warns doctors. For these patients, honesty can be a matter of life or death: Some heart attack treatments can be deadly to someone using cocaine.

New guidelines published online Monday in the American Heart Association journal Circulation say that emergency room doctors need to be aware that symptoms of a heart attack in younger patients with no heart disease risk factors may be caused by cocaine use.

The drug can cause chest pain, shortness of breath, anxiety, palpitations, dizziness, nausea and heavy sweating — all symptoms of a heart attack.

Sounds like a swell time.

Anyway, if you plan to do a lot of coke and wind up at the hospital, at least fess up.

Cocaine boosts the heart's need for oxygen by increasing the heart rate, blood pressure and the heart's squeezing power with each beat, the group said. But the drug also deprives the heart of oxygen by constricting blood vessels and making the blood more likely to clot and cause a heart attack.

Chest pain known as angina is a symptom of the heart being deprived of oxygen.

A common way to diagnose and treat some heart attacks is threading a tiny tube into the heart's arteries and using imaging to pinpoint the location of a blockage. The artery can then be opened with a balloon.

When that cannot be done, patients with an apparent heart attack often get a clot-busting drug. But the statement noted that such drugs bring an extra risk of bleeding into the brain in patients whose blood pressure is high due to cocaine use.

Beta-blockers can lower blood pressure without constricting the arteries of heart attack patients, but could have the opposite effect in cocaine users - raising blood pressure and squeezing arteries, according to the statement. In laboratory animals, this has led to seizures and death.