TY  - JOUR
PY  - 1992//
TI  - Cocaine poisoning from transport of the drug in the gastrointestinal tract (the body-packer syndrome)
JO  - Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift
A1  - John, Hubert
A1  - Schoenenberger, R.
A1  - Renner, N.
A1  - Ritz, R.
SP  - 1952
EP  - 1955
VL  - 117
IS  - 51-52
N2  - 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.<p />  <p>Language: de</p>
LA  - de
SN  - 0012-0472
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/
ID  - ref1
ER  -