Have you ever heard of cannabis? Some adults use it for various reasons, including to manage pain.
But a recent study shows that adults who use cannabis actually have more pain after surgery than those who don’t use it.
This information was shared at a big gathering of anesthesiologists (doctors who help manage pain during and after surgeries).
Dr. Elyad Ekrami, the main researcher of the study, works at the Anesthesia Institute of the Cleveland Clinic. He mentioned that cannabis is a common drug used in the United States.
Many people use it to deal with long-lasting pain. However, there’s not a lot of information about how it affects people after they have surgery.
The study looked at the medical records of 34,521 adults. Among them, 1,681 had used cannabis within 30 days before their surgeries. The others had never used cannabis.
The research showed that the people who used cannabis had 14% more pain in the first day after surgery than the ones who didn’t use cannabis. They also used 7% more opioids, another type of painkiller, after surgery.
While this increase in opioid use was not big enough to be considered statistically significant (a term used in research to show a meaningful difference), it could still be important in real life situations, according to the researchers.
Dr. Ekrami said that some smaller studies before had also looked at the link between cannabis use, pain, and opioid use. But those studies had different results.
This new study was done with a larger number of patients and didn’t include those with long-lasting pain or those who had received a specific type of pain control method. This makes the results more reliable.
More research is needed to understand how cannabis affects surgical outcomes.
For now, doctors should keep in mind that patients who use cannabis may feel more pain and might need more painkillers after surgery.
Dr. Ekrami emphasized the need for different approaches to control pain after surgery.
If you care about pain, please read studies about yogurt linked to lower frailty in older people, and tart cherry could help reduce inflammation.
For more information about health, please see recent studies that painkiller ibuprofen may strongly influence your liver, and results showing Marijuana for pain relief may lead to withdrawal symptoms.
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