Citation

Ly BT, Thornton SL, Buono C, Stone JA, Wu AHB. Ann. Emerg. Med. 2012; 59(6): 545-547.

Affiliation

Division of Medical Toxicology, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA; Department of Emergency Medicine, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA; Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Diego, CA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, American College of Emergency Physicians, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.annemergmed.2011.08.013

PMID

21924518

Abstract

Phencyclidine is one of the drugs of abuse included in qualitative urine drug screens that are frequently ordered in the emergency department despite concerns about specificity and clinical utility. Many drugs have been described to cause false-positive results for phencyclidine. We present 2 cases of false-positive phencyclidine qualitative urine drug screen results in patients with seizures from tramadol misuse or abuse. The involvement of tramadol and its active metabolite, N-desmethyltramadol, was confirmed by in vitro testing. These cases illustrate that tramadol and its metabolites can trigger a false-positive phencyclidine urine drug screen result in nonfatal cases and highlight the lack of specificity of the phencyclidine qualitative urine drug screen.

Language: en