Safety of upper endoscopy in patients with active cocaine use

BACKGROUND: a positive urine toxicology test, has been mostly addressed in the surgical and obstetrical literature. However, there are no clear guidelines on how to effectively risk stratify patients found to be positive for cocaine in the pre-operative setting, often leading to costly procedure cancellations. Within the field of gastroenterology, there is no current data available regarding safety of performing esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) in patients with recent cocaine use. AIM: To compare the prevalence of EGD related complications between active (≤ 5 d) and remote (> 5 d) users of cocaine. METHODS: -test, chi-square, Wilcoxon rank sum, and Fisher exact test. RESULTS: < 0.05). There were no significant differences in overall hemodynamics between both groups. CONCLUSION: remote use of cocaine. Interestingly, there were significantly more patients (30%) with active use of cocaine that required general anesthesia as compared to remote users (0%).