Man, I really wouldn't. My understanding is that of the people who present to the emergency department with chest pain, something like a third of them have been using cocaine. It causes Real Problems.
This is a little disingenuous, without further elucidation. As far as the statistic you have quoted is concerned, it tells us nothing about how dangerous cocaine is. We need to know how many out of the total population of cocaine users experience chest pain, how many of them go to an ER, and then how many of those (who in total make up 1/3 of ER presentations with chest pain) are further diagnosed with some actual serious problem...
if we don't know what the outcome of these ER visits are, then it could well be that for some tiny percentage of cocaine users there is a side effect that causes the perception of chest pain, which disappears with no ill effects after a few hours. or, maybe, this represents almost all cocaine users - 90% of them experience severe enough chest pain to warrant an ER visit, all of whom are pronounced dead withing minutes of arrival.
annoyingly, the website you linked to which details this singular datum, does nothing to clarify as to what the truth of the matter is. it certainly doesn't appear to be "advancing addiction science" in any useful way...
tudorw|8 years ago
tmp-20150107|8 years ago
if we don't know what the outcome of these ER visits are, then it could well be that for some tiny percentage of cocaine users there is a side effect that causes the perception of chest pain, which disappears with no ill effects after a few hours. or, maybe, this represents almost all cocaine users - 90% of them experience severe enough chest pain to warrant an ER visit, all of whom are pronounced dead withing minutes of arrival.
annoyingly, the website you linked to which details this singular datum, does nothing to clarify as to what the truth of the matter is. it certainly doesn't appear to be "advancing addiction science" in any useful way...
unknown|8 years ago
[deleted]
jiggunjer|8 years ago
Eilene|8 years ago