With rising cannabis use prevalence, understanding any potential relationship with inhalational anesthetic dosing is crucial.
Cannabis users aged 65 years or older undergoing general anesthesia for surgery required higher doses of inhalational anesthetics than nonusers. However, the clinical relevance of this difference remains unclear.
A recent study was led by Ruba Sajdeya, MD, PhD, of the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Florida, Gainesville, in Anesthesiology is disrupting cannabis and opioids. However, the study is purported to also “lacked access to prescription or dispensed medications, including opioids, which may have introduced residual confounding. Potential underdocumentation of cannabis use in medical records could have led to exposure misclassification. The causality between cannabis usage and increased anesthetic dosing could not be established due to the observational nature of this study.”
