Study Shows Cannabis Users Require More Anesthesia During Surgery
According to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (Anesthesiology 2022), adults who regularly use cannabis require more anesthesia during surgery compared to those who do not use it. The study also notes that cannabis users need higher amounts of opioids during post-surgical recovery.
The American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), founded in 1905, is an educational, research, and scientific society with over 56,000 members. The ASA is dedicated to improving and maintaining the standards of medical practice in anesthesiology. The organization aims to ensure that physician anesthesiologists assess and manage patient care before, during, and after surgery to provide the highest quality and safest care possible.
Study Details and Findings
Researchers analyzed the medical records of 34,521 adult patients who underwent elective surgeries at the Cleveland Clinic. Among them, 1,681 individuals regularly used cannabis within 30 days prior to surgery, while the other patients had never used it. Cannabis users experienced 14% more pain during the first 24 hours after surgery compared to those who had never used cannabis. Additionally, cannabis users consumed 7% more opioids after surgery. While the authors note that this increase was not statistically significant, it likely has clinical relevance.
“The relationship between cannabis use, pain assessment, and opioid consumption has been reported in previous smaller studies, but those results have been inconsistent,” said Dr. Elyad Ekrami, the lead author of the study. “Our study has a much larger sample size and does not include patients diagnosed with chronic pain. Additionally, our research groups were balanced for confounding factors, including age, gender, tobacco and other illicit drug use, as well as depression and psychological disorders.”
Dr. Ekrami emphasized the need for further research to better understand the impact of cannabis on surgical outcomes: “Physicians should be aware that patients who use cannabis may experience more pain and require slightly higher doses of opioids after surgery, highlighting the need to continue exploring multimodal approaches to postoperative pain management.”
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