Cannabis is the most often used illicit drug in the United States, and it is increasingly being used as an alternative treatment for chronic pain.

A study presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2022 annual meeting found that cannabis users have greater postoperative pain compared to non-users.

Cannabis, according to the lead author, is the most often used illicit drug in the United States, and it is increasingly being used as an alternative treatment for chronic pain.

This new study, adds lead author Elyad Ekrami “shows that adults who use cannabis are having more — not less — postoperative pain. Consequently, they have higher opioid consumption after surgery.”

Researchers examined the records of 34,521 adult patients, 1,681 of whom were cannabis users, who underwent elective surgery at Cleveland Clinic between January 2010 and December 2020.

The cannabis users had used the substance within thirty days before surgery, whereas the other patients had never used the drug.

In the first 24 hours after surgery, individuals who used cannabis suffered 14% higher pain than patients who never used cannabis.

Also, patients who used cannabis took 7% more opioids after surgery. This was not statistically significant, but the authors say it is likely clinically important.

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

“Our study,” as explained by Dr. Ekrami, “has a much larger sample size and does not include patients with chronic pain diagnosis or those who received regional anesthesia, 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.”

Dr. Ekrami said that more research is needed to find out more about how cannabis affects the results of surgery.

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

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