Cocaine as a Rare Cause of Cholecystitis

Cholecystitis, inflammation of the gallbladder, is diagnosed in approximately 200,000 people in the US each year. Cocaine is an illicit drug that is wildly abused in the US, GI complications such as acute pancreatitis, colitis, bowel perforation, mesenteric ischemia, and biliary tree obstruction have been reported in limited studies. To the best of our knowledge, there are no reported cases of cocaine-induced cholecystitis and no established treatment plans to date, however, we strongly believe that our patient’s cocaine use resulted in cholecystitis. Hence, we wanted to shed some light on the possible side effects of cocaine on the gall bladder.