“Do you take cocaine? » : Sandrine Charpentier, head of the emergency department at the Toulouse University Hospital, no longer hesitates to ask the question to patients (men, women, young and old) who arrive at the hospital with chest pain, palpitations, disorders neurological or psychiatric. “And in all situations that relate to accidentology”she explains – accidents in the home or on the road.
This has not always been the case, but the professor has seen, over the years and ” case “the profiles – and the risks – evolve. “Until now, when we had to deal with young patients with chest pain, without any particular history, the probability of a myocardial infarction was relatively low.she says. With the taking of cocaine, it is on the increase. » Of how many ? The head of department cannot quantify it. But enough for her to review her care interview and address “systematically” the subject, “so as not to miss”.
Public Health France took on the task of quantifying it: on the occasion of the release, in the spring, of a report by the French Observatory of Drugs and Addictive Tendencies (OFDT), the national agency released unpublished data reporting a “strong and continuous increase” passages to the emergency room in connection with the use of cocaine, between 2010 and 2022. A tripling, even: in twelve years, we have gone from 8.6 passages per 100,000, for this reason, to 21.2.
In total, over just over a decade, 23,335 such situations have been recorded, with a recent acceleration in 2021-2022. Results consistent with feedback from the Drugs Info Service system: calls relating to cocaine rose from 2,133 to 6,447, between 2010 and 2022.
Predominantly male patients
On average, for 2022, cocaine poisonings represented 72 visits to the emergency room each week. A “relative pressure on our services”, tempers Marc Noizet, boss of the SAMU-Urgences de France union, who recalls that 21 million visits to the emergency room are counted each year. Nevertheless: the upward trend exists, everywhere on the territory, even if it is more marked in certain regions than in others: Guyana, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes…
Occitanie, where the Toulouse University Hospital is located, is in the top three (27 visits out of 100,000). Although the increase is greater among women (4.5 to 12.6 per 100,000) than among men (12 to 29.2 per 100,000), the profiles identified among patients remain predominantly male (at 75% ), with a median age of 32.
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