Chronic pain patientsʼ perspectives of medical cannabis

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Abstract

<p id="P2">Medical cannabis patients, including two-thirds with chronic-pain, report health benefits including improved pain management and sleep. Pharmacoeconomic factors were the greatest limitation of medical cannabis. </p>

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Medical cannabis laws and opioid analgesic overdose mortality in the United States, 1999-2010.

Marcus A Bachhuber, Brendan Saloner, Chinazo Cunningham … (2014)

Opioid analgesic overdose mortality continues to rise in the United States, driven by increases in prescribing for chronic pain. Because chronic pain is a major indication for medical cannabis, laws that establish access to medical cannabis may change overdose mortality related to opioid analgesics in states that have enacted them.

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Medical Cannabis Use Is Associated With Decreased Opiate Medication Use in a Retrospective Cross-Sectional Survey of Patients With Chronic Pain.

Kevin Boehnke, Evangelos Litinas, Daniel Clauw (2016)

Opioids are commonly used to treat patients with chronic pain (CP), though there is little evidence that they are effective for long term CP treatment. Previous studies reported strong associations between passage of medical cannabis laws and decrease in opioid overdose statewide. Our aim was to examine whether using medical cannabis for CP changed individual patterns of opioid use. Using an online questionnaire, we conducted a cross-sectional retrospective survey of 244 medical cannabis patients with CP who patronized a medical cannabis dispensary in Michigan between November 2013 and February 2015. Data collected included demographic information, changes in opioid use, quality of life, medication classes used, and medication side effects before and after initiation of cannabis usage. Among study participants, medical cannabis use was associated with a 64% decrease in opioid use (n = 118), decreased number and side effects of medications, and an improved quality of life (45%). This study suggests that many CP patients are essentially substituting medical cannabis for opioids and other medications for CP treatment, and finding the benefit and side effect profile of cannabis to be greater than these other classes of medications. More research is needed to validate this finding.

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Cannabis for therapeutic purposes: patient characteristics, access, and reasons for use.

Zach Walsh, Robert Callaway, Lynne Belle-Isle … (2013)

The authorized and unauthorized use of cannabis for therapeutic purposes (CTP) has increased dramatically in recent years, and physicians have called for further research to better clarify the parameters of effective and appropriate use. We report findings from a large cross-sectional study of the use of CTP in Canada and compare use across medical conditions and across authorized and unauthorized users.