Citation

John H, Schoenenberger R, Renner N, Ritz R. Dtsch. Med. Wochenschr. 1992; 117(51-52): 1952-1955.

Vernacular Title

Cocain-Intoxikation durch Drogentransport im Gastrointestinaltrakt

Affiliation

Department Chirurgie, Universitätskliniken des Kantonsspitals Basel.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1992, Georg Thieme Verlag)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

1478170

Abstract

Three days after arriving in Switzerland from Bolivia a 35-year-old man presented at a casualty department. He was anxious, agitated and hallucinating, and he expressed delusional ideas of being poisoned. As a general physical examination was without abnormal findings he was thought to suffer from a psychiatric disorder. It was only when he had evacuated in stool a long oval foreign body, packed in plastic sheeting and filled with a dark paste, that cocaine poisoning due to cocaine transport in the gastrointestinal tract (body packer syndrome) was suspected. Plain X-ray of the abdomen revealed numerous regular structures of poor X-ray contrast and the urine contained cocaine metabolites, confirming the tentative diagnosis. As the patient's state of consciousness deteriorated and he had a grand mal seizure, an emergency laparotomy was performed. 78 packages (two of them had opened) were removed by gastro- and caecotomy. Total cocaine weight was 650 g. He was discharged from hospital after 11 days, free of symptoms.

Language: de