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Foreign Material in the Gastrointestinal Tract: Cocaine Packets

Smuggling drugs by swallowing or inserting into a body cavity is not only a serious and growing international crime, but can also lead to lethal medical complications. The most common cause of death in ‘body packers’, people transporting drugs by ingesting a packet into the gastrointestinal tract, i...

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Autores principales: Kucukmetin, Nurten Turkel, Gucyetmez, Bulent, Poyraz, Tuncer, Yildirim, Sadik, Boztas, Gungor, Tozun, Nurdan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: S. Karger AG 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3934785/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24574951
http://dx.doi.org/10.1159/000358555
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author Kucukmetin, Nurten Turkel
Gucyetmez, Bulent
Poyraz, Tuncer
Yildirim, Sadik
Boztas, Gungor
Tozun, Nurdan
author_facet Kucukmetin, Nurten Turkel
Gucyetmez, Bulent
Poyraz, Tuncer
Yildirim, Sadik
Boztas, Gungor
Tozun, Nurdan
author_sort Kucukmetin, Nurten Turkel
collection PubMed
description Smuggling drugs by swallowing or inserting into a body cavity is not only a serious and growing international crime, but can also lead to lethal medical complications. The most common cause of death in ‘body packers’, people transporting drugs by ingesting a packet into the gastrointestinal tract, is acute drug toxicity from a ruptured packet. However, more than 30 years after the initial report of body packing, there is still no definitive treatment protocol for the management of this patient group. The treatment strategy is determined according to the particular condition of the patient and the clinical experience of the treatment center. Surgical intervention is also less common now, due to both the use of improved packaging materials among smugglers and a shift towards a more conservative medical approach. Herein, we report a case of toxicity from ingested packets of cocaine that leaked and, despite surgery, resulted in exitus of the patient.
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spelling pubmed-39347852014-02-26 Foreign Material in the Gastrointestinal Tract: Cocaine Packets Kucukmetin, Nurten Turkel Gucyetmez, Bulent Poyraz, Tuncer Yildirim, Sadik Boztas, Gungor Tozun, Nurdan Case Rep Gastroenterol Published online: January, 2014 Smuggling drugs by swallowing or inserting into a body cavity is not only a serious and growing international crime, but can also lead to lethal medical complications. The most common cause of death in ‘body packers’, people transporting drugs by ingesting a packet into the gastrointestinal tract, is acute drug toxicity from a ruptured packet. However, more than 30 years after the initial report of body packing, there is still no definitive treatment protocol for the management of this patient group. The treatment strategy is determined according to the particular condition of the patient and the clinical experience of the treatment center. Surgical intervention is also less common now, due to both the use of improved packaging materials among smugglers and a shift towards a more conservative medical approach. Herein, we report a case of toxicity from ingested packets of cocaine that leaked and, despite surgery, resulted in exitus of the patient. S. Karger AG 2014-01-30 /pmc/articles/PMC3934785/ /pubmed/24574951 http://dx.doi.org/10.1159/000358555 Text en Copyright © 2014 by S. Karger AG, Basel http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ This is an Open Access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC) (www.karger.com/OA-license), applicable to the online version of the article only. Users may download, print and share this work on the Internet for noncommercial purposes only, provided the original work is properly cited, and a link to the original work on http://www.karger.com and the terms of this license are included in any shared versions.
spellingShingle Published online: January, 2014
Kucukmetin, Nurten Turkel
Gucyetmez, Bulent
Poyraz, Tuncer
Yildirim, Sadik
Boztas, Gungor
Tozun, Nurdan
Foreign Material in the Gastrointestinal Tract: Cocaine Packets
title Foreign Material in the Gastrointestinal Tract: Cocaine Packets
title_full Foreign Material in the Gastrointestinal Tract: Cocaine Packets
title_fullStr Foreign Material in the Gastrointestinal Tract: Cocaine Packets
title_full_unstemmed Foreign Material in the Gastrointestinal Tract: Cocaine Packets
title_short Foreign Material in the Gastrointestinal Tract: Cocaine Packets
title_sort foreign material in the gastrointestinal tract: cocaine packets
topic Published online: January, 2014
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3934785/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24574951
http://dx.doi.org/10.1159/000358555
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