Management of cocaine poisoning

✍ Scribed by Kent Olson; Neal L. Benowitz; Paul Pentel

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1983
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 237 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1097-6760
• DOI: 10.1016/s0196-0644(83)80222-4

✦ Synopsis

CORRESPONDENCE

missile wounds, and found little or no discernible increase in hyperkalemic response before one week and after two months.

Cooperman s and others 67 found significant increases in patients with CNS insults including spinal cord trauma, tumor, CVA, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, and others. Such increases lasted six months in those with acute insults and longer with ongoing disease. However, most of these patients were several weeks to months post injury, and the few who were not did not show a significant rise in potassium. In the excellent review of succinylcholine-induced hyperkalemia by Gronert and Theye, s they concluded that an increase In potassium as a response to succinylcholine is manifest only if the drug is given later than 5 to 15 days post injury. Finally, Kohlschutter et al 9 in 1976 reported on four of nine patients with serious intraabdominal infections who showed a significant hyperkalemic response to succinylcholine, all of them febrile and with a leukocytosis of at least two weeks duration.

The common observation is that acutely and for at least the first few days post insult, the administration of succinylcholine in patients with bums, trauma, abdominal infections, or CNS disease is not associated with a rise in serum potassium significantly above the average of 0.5 mEq/L seen in healthy subjects.