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Cocaine may cause aneurysms for the coronart artery

by Medindia Content Team on May 12 2005 12:49 PM

Cocaine had been associated to cardiovascular diseases and recent study says that cocaine abuse can lead to coronary artery aneurysms.

Studies have always been carried on to find out the effect of substance abuse on the health of the person. The new study was done to find out the effect of cocaine abuse on the health of the heart.

In cocaine users undergoing coronary angiography, there was evidence of heart aneurysms.

Aneurysm is a ballooning of a portion of the artery that happens due to waekness in the wall of the blood vessels. This condition may be congenital or acquired. Often high blood preassure may be one of the reasons of the artery being thus affected. Cocaine is known to affect blood pressure periodically. It may take a coronary angiography to find out the existence of aneurysm of the heart.

The researchers had taken the clinical angiographic characteristics of 112 patients who have a history of cocaine addiction and compared that with a control group of the same age group. The results of the study showed that 30.4% of the cocaine users have coronary artery aneurysms compared to 7.6% of the control group.

Aneurysm of coronary artery may lead to rupture, infection, and compression of blood vessels, causing massive bleeding and may lead to death.


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