Cannabis use increases risk of death, heart attack for ED patients
Patients with a history of cannabis use may face higher risks of dying or experiencing a heart attack if they end up in the emergency department (ED), according to new data published in Cureus.[1]
“Cannabis, or marijuana, is one of the most widely used psychoactive substances in the world,” wrote first author Jeffrey Bowcutt, a researcher with The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, and colleagues. “Up to 147 million people, or approximately 2.5% of the world’s adult population, have reported using cannabis preparations. Despite its popularity, the association between cannabis and adverse cardiovascular events is poorly understood. Prior meta-analyses examining this association have shown conflicting or inconclusive findings.”
Bowcutt et al. explored data from more than 1.7 million ED patients who underwent treatment from 2005 to 2022. The group used propensity matching and landed on two groups of nearly 300,000 adult patients each. One group included patients with cannabis use disorder (CUD), which the authors defined as cannabis use within five years before the ED visit, or one month after the ED visit. The other group had no history of cannabis use. The mean ages of the two groups were 35.4 years old for the CUD patients and 35.6 years old for the control group.
Overall, the three-year mortality rates were 2.9% for the CUD group and 1.7% for the control group. This difference, good for a relative risk of 1.69, was viewed as statistically significant. Three-year myocardial infarction rates, meanwhile, were 0.91% for the CUD group and 0.85% for the control group. This difference was smaller, but still resulted in a relative risk of 1.07 for the CUD patients.
Three-year stroke rates, meanwhile, were comparable for the two groups—a finding that did not line up with some of the previous studies showing a link between CUD and stroke risk.
“Although cannabis is often perceived as relatively harmless, our findings before and after propensity matching suggest that patients with CUD may have a higher risk of mortality and MI compared to controls,” the authors wrote.
Reviewing these data, the group concluded that there is a “concerning association” between cannabis use and adverse cardiovascular outcomes.
Click here to read the full analysis.
Michael has more than 19 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.