Warning to emergency room doctors: Cocaine reactions look like heart attacks. If you treat a cocaine patient like a heart attack victim, you could kill him.

The American Medical Association reports that cocaine reactions cause the same symptoms as heart attacks: chest pain, shortness of breath, anxiety, palpitations, dizziness, nausea, and heavy sweating. However, if a doctor uses clot-busting drugs or beta-blockers, which are typically used to treat heart attacks, he could cause a lethal reaction in a cocaine user.

"Not knowing what you are dealing with and giving the wrong therapies could mean death rather a benefit," said Dr. James Reiffel, professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University Medical Center in New York.

Almost 200,000 people, many of them under 25 years old, go to ERs every year because of cocaine reactions. The number of cocaine-related ER visits rose 47 percent between 1995 and 2002.

Labels: cocaine, death, hospitals