Cannabis users face increased post-operative pain

Monday October 24th 2022

Patients who are regular users of cannabis are likely to experience increased pain after surgery, according to a major new study reported yesterday.

Anaesthetists, who conducted the study, found these patients needed additional opioid treatment after surgery to help deal with the extra pain.

The research, involving more than 34,000 patients, was reported to the US-based Anesthesiology 2022 conference yesterday.

The researchers do not speculate about why cannabis users suffer more pain – but sought in the study to screen out factors such as pre-existing chronic pain and use of other illicit drugs.

The patients were all treated at the Cleveland Clinic, Ohio, since 2010, and 1,681 of them were found to be cannabis users.

Cannabis users experienced 14% more pain than others after surgery and consumed 7% more opioids.

Researcher Dr Elyad Ekrami said: “The association between cannabis use, pain scores and opioid consumption has been reported before in smaller studies, but they’ve had conflicting results.

“Our study has a much larger sample size and does not include patients with chronic pain diagnosis or those who received regional anaesthesia, which would have seriously conflicted our results. Furthermore, our study groups were balanced by confounding factors including age, sex, tobacco and other illicit drug use, as well as depression and psychological disorders.

“Physicians should consider that patients using cannabis may have more pain and require slightly higher doses of opioids after surgery, emphasising the need to continue exploring a multimodal approach to post-surgical pain control.”

Anesthesiology 2022 23 October 2022

Tags: Alternative Therapy | North America | Pain Relief

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