Study: Recreational drug use triples odds of repeat heart emergencies

Recreational drug users are three times more likely to have repeated heart health emergencies than people who don't use, a new study has found.

About 11% of patients admitted to intensive cardiac care units have been using recreational drugs, said researcher Dr. Raphael Mirailles , a physician with the Hospital Lariboisiere in Paris.

Overall, "recreational drug use was associated with a tripling of the risk of a repeat serious cardiovascular event within one year," Mirailles said.

For the study, researchers followed nearly 1,400 patients admitted to ICCUs in 39 hospitals across France during two weeks in April 2021.

All were screened for drug use using urine tests. About 11% had been using cannabis, opioids, cocaine, amphetamines or MDMA, results showed.

The patients were then tracked for about a year, to see whether they had suffered another cardiac arrest, heart attack or stroke, researchers said.

After a year of follow-up, about 7% of the patients had experienced another serious heart emergency.

About 13% of drug users had a follow-up heart health emergency, compared with 6% of non-users, researchers said.

Drug users were more likely than non-users to suffer a heart-related death (5.7% vs. 4.5%), non-fatal heart attack (5.1% vs. 1.3%) or stroke (1.9% vs. 0.6%).

MDMA was the drug most associated with heart risk, with users just over four times more likely to have a follow-up heart event. Heroin and other opioids increased risk by 3.6 times, and cannabis did so by 1.8 times.

Researchers will present these findings Wednesday at the European Society of Cardiology's annual meeting in London. Findings presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Current guidelines don't recommend regular drug screening of patients requiring critical care, Mirailles noted.

Given these results, "systemic screening should be considered in intensive care," he added in a meeting news release.

More information

The American Heart Association has more on illegal drugs and heart disease .

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