You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Unusual association of diseases/symptoms
CASE REPORT
Bilateral pneumothorax, surgical emphysema and pneumomediastinum in a young male patient following MDMA intake
  1. Nonyelum Evangeline Obiechina1,
  2. Ahrane Jayakumar1,
  3. Yusra Khan2,
  4. James Bass2
  1. 1Elderly Medicine, Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Burton on Trent, UK
  2. 2Burton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Burton on Trent, UK
  1. Correspondence to Dr Nonyelum Evangeline Obiechina, nonye.obiechina{at}hotmail.co.uk

Summary

MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) or ‘Ecstasy’ is an illicit drug frequently used by young people at parties and ‘raves’. It is readily available in spite of the fact that it is illegal.1 It is perceived by a lot of young people as being ‘harmless’, but there have been a few high-profile deaths associated with its use.2 Known side effects of MDMA include hyperthermia, rhabdomyolysis, coagulopathy and cardiac arrhythmias.3 Rarer side effects include surgical emphysema and pneumomediastinum, which have been better described with cocaine abuse.4–6 We present a case of bilateral pneumothorax, surgical emphysema and pneumomediastinum in a young man after taking ecstasy.

  • drugs misuse (including addiction)
  • respiratory medicine

https://doi.org/10.1136/bcr-2017-223103

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.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors NEO, AJ and JB contributed equally to writing the script; YK obtained consent for the images and contributed to writing the case report itself. Both NEO and AJ formatted the manuscript to prepare it for submission.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Obtained.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.