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Stroke, Vol 23, 427-430, Copyright © 1992 by American Heart Association

ARTICLES

Concurrent myocardial and cerebral infarctions after intranasal cocaine use

MA Sloan and TA Mattioni
Department of Neurology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Cardiac and cerebrovascular complications associated with cocaine abuse have increasingly been reported, but concurrent development of cocaine-induced cardiac disease and stroke has rarely been reported. CASE DESCRIPTION: A 37-year-old man with a remote history of intravenous heroin and amphetamine use, cardiomyopathy, and recent cocaine use developed chest pain and ventricular tachycardia 30 minutes after intranasal cocaine hydrochloride use and jogging on a cold winter morning. Ventricular tachycardia was converted to atrial fibrillation. He was proven to have a small myocardial infarction. Within 6 hours of cocaine use he suffered a left hemisphere stroke. Cardiac electrophysiologic evaluation revealed inducible ventricular tachycardia. CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, this is the first report of concurrent myocardial infarction, life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias, and cerebral infarction temporally related to cocaine use. It is probable that one mechanism by which cocaine use causes stroke is to trigger expression of a known cardiac source of embolism.

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