You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Case report
Cocaine induced prolongation of the QT interval
  1. D Taylor,
  2. D Parish,
  3. L Thompson,
  4. M Cavaliere
  1. Mercer University School of Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Macon, USA
  1. Correspondence to:
 Dr D Taylor
 3901 Northside Drive, Apt 4 H, Macon, GA 31210, UK; derrickwtaylorearthlink.net

https://doi.org/10.1136/emj.2002.003251

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Prolongation of the QT interval is a serious electrocardiogram finding because of its association with torsades de pointes and sudden cardiac death.1 Both congenital and acquired factors can lead to abnormal lengthening of the QT interval. Six types of congenital long QT syndrome (LQT1–LQT6) have been described, each involving mutations in genes encoding potassium or sodium transmembrane channel proteins.2

    Acquired causes of QT prolongation include hypokalaemia, hypomagnesaemia, hypocalcaemia, human immunodeficiency virus infection, and myocardial ischaemia.2–4 Numerous drugs have also been found to cause prolongation of the QT interval. A listing of these drugs can be found on a web site (http://www.qtdrugs.org). The main membrane channel these drugs affect is the human ether-a-go-go-related gene (HERG) encoded potassium channel; congenital mutations involving this gene lead to the LQT2 type of the inherited long QT syndromes.2,5

    Cocaine use has been associated with many cardiac complications including ventricular arrhythmias and sudden death, …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • ↵* QTc is the QT interval corrected for the patient’s heart rate. QTc = (QT)/(√ RR), where RR is the distance between consecutive R waves on the electrocardiogram.

    • Conflicts of interest: none declared.