Emergency Medicine: Open Access

Emergency Medicine: Open Access
Open Access

ISSN: 2165-7548

Medical Image - (2015) Volume 5, Issue 1

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CXR of Pneumomediastinum and Subcutaneous Emphysema Following Cocaine ‘Snorting’

Stephen Asha*
Director of Emergency Medicine Research, St George Hospital, Australia
*Corresponding Author: Stephen Asha, Director of Emergency Medicine Research, Emergency Department, St George Hospital, Gray St, Kogarah, NSW, 2217, Australia, Tel: 02 9113 1501, Fax: 02 9113 3946 Email:

History

19yr gentleman presents with throat and chest pain at a friend’s party, the night before had snorted cocaine ~0200 noticed pain in throat and pain with swallowing over the next few hours.

He developed pain across his anterior chest wall – pleuretic – constant during the next day noticed -voice change; sounds deeper - neck feels swollen and gets a 'crackling noise' when he touches it or swallows subcutaneous emphysema present in neck bilaterally, extending to apex of neck (Figure 1).

emergency-medicine-pneumomediastinum

Figure 1: CXR of pneumomediastinum and subcutaneous emphysema

Citation: Asha (2015) CXR of Pneumomediastinum and Subcutaneous Emphysema Following Cocaine ‘Snorting’. Emerg Med (Los Angel) 5: i104.

Copyright: © 2015 Asha S, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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