A new study by the American Heart Association warned Monday that cocaine use in young or otherwise healthy patients could sometimes cause heart attack symptoms like chest pain, shortness of breath, anxiety, palpitations, dizziness, nausea, heavy sweating and palpitations.

Cocaine use also results in increased blood pressure that can increase the risk of bleeding into the brain if a patient is given clot-busting drugs.

According to the government's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the number of cocaine-related users visiting ERs rose 47 percent from 1995 to 2002, increasing from 135,711 to 199,198. The majority of these visits are of younger people, around the age of 35.

"More commonly, these are younger people. The most common age group is about 35 to 44 for patients who come to the emergency department after cocaine use, having chest pain," said Dr James McCord, cardiology director of the chest pain unit for the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit who headed the panel that drafted the AHA statement.

According to the AHA report, on most occasions, chest pain related to cocaine occurred within three hours of using the drug, but this is not always the case though, as cocaine can stay in the body for 18 or more hours after use, and still cause complications.

The report also urges doctors to ask young patients if they’ve recently used cocaine, as some heart attack treatments can be deadly to someone using cocaine. Two standard treatments for heart attacks, beta-blockers as well as clot-busting drugs are very dangerous when combined with cocaine use.

“Not knowing what you are dealing with and giving the wrong therapies could mean death rather than benefit,” said Dr. James Reiffel, professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University Medical Center/New York Presbyterian Hospital, the Associated Press reports.

Reiffel said doctors should explain why it’s important to know if a patient is using cocaine. He added that admitting use of an illegal substance is confidential information that won’t be reported to law enforcement.” The caregiver is not here to judge.”

However, Dr. McCord said that, while patients are in an observation unit, there is also an opportunity for healthcare providers to offer drug-cessation counseling.

"Currently, the level of drug counseling available in most observation units, particularly at night, amounts to a pamphlet on drug abuse and referral phone numbers. This is an area where we can do a better job. We should use that hospital visit as a teachable moment to educate these patients on how they can improve their health and offer them counseling and referral programs for drug cessation,” McCord said.

The AHA statement was published in the journal Circulation.