New study reveals that cannabis use increases post-surgery pain

A study by the American society of anesthesiologists showed that adult cannabis users experience more pain following surgery than non-users.

Published on October 23, the study analyzed data from 34.521 adult patients.

1.681 of the patients are cannabis users who had elective surgeries at Cleveland Clinic in the United States from January 2010 to December 2020.

The patients who used cannabis did so within 30 days of their surgery, while the non-users had never used the drug.

When compared to patients who never used cannabis, those who did so experienced 14% higher pain in the first 24 hours following surgery.

In addition, even though scientists note that this finding was not statistically significant, patients who smoked cannabis ingested 7% more opioids (such as morphine and codeine) following surgery, which is likely clinically relevant.

The study did not include patients with chronic pain diagnosis or those who received regional anesthesia, because it would have seriously conflicted with the results, said Elyad Ekrami, the lead author of the study.

The study was presented at the ANESTHESIOLOGY 2022 annual meeting.

Ekrami noted that compared to previous studies, this one has a much larger sample size.

He called for the continuous exploration of a multimodal approach to post-surgical pain control.