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Alan J. Tuchman, MD; Michael Daras, MD; Pierre Zalzal, MD; John Mangiardi, MD
New York Medical College/ Lincoln Hospital Bronx

JAMA. 1987;257(9):1175.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

Cocaine abuse and its medical, psychiatric, and neurological complications have been well documented.¹ However, the incidence of intracranial hemorrhage in cocaine abuse must be exceedingly low, as only three cases have been reported in the American literature^2,3 despite a large and growing population of cocaine abusers.

Use of "crack," a new and more potent form of cocaine, has recently reached epidemic proportions in many major cities, especially New York.⁴ To our knowledge, no reports of intracranial hemorrhage associated with its abuse have been reported.

In a two-week period, we evaluated five men aged 21 to 40 years with intracranial hemorrhage, one subsequent to confirmed abuse of crack, taken intravenously, one following intravenous cocaine abuse, and three with cocaine present in large amounts in their urine. Three of the patients had large intracerebral hematomas and two had subarachnoid hemorrhages. Two of the patients subsequently died, . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Footnotes
Edited by Drummond Rennie, MD, Senior Contributing Editor; Sharon Iverson, Assistant Editor.

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