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Abstract
Despite medical cannabis' capacity for symptom relief and its legality in many regions, it still remains a controversial treatment. Our outpatient palliative care oncology clinic has experienced an increase in interest from patients to incorporate medical cannabis into their symptom management. The aim of this study is to better understand the demographics, diagnosis, and symptom profile of patients with advanced cancer accessing medical cannabis. Methods: A retrospective chart review was undertaken of patients accessing medical cannabis at an academic tertiary Symptom Management Clinic for a seven month study period in 2014. Results: Of approximately 340 patients seen in clinic, 43 patients (12.5%) were identified as having obtained authorization for medical cannabis. Patients were predominantly older with 74.4% of patients aged 51-75 years, and 4.7% of patients were over 75 years of age. They had a wide variety of cancer diagnosis, of which GI maligancies (30%) and lung cancer (20.9%) were the most common. Patients experienced a multitude of symptoms with pain being the most common (88.4%), followed by fatigue, nausea and lack of appetite. Of note, a significant number (39.5%) reported already using medical cannabsi at the time of lisencing. Conclusions: The field of medical cannabis use is young and much work still needs to be done to understand its place amongst symptom management in general and in palliative patients specifically. This small retrospective study describes a cohort of pallaitive cancer patients who accessed medical cannabis to manage a variety of symptoms.
Keywords: Medical cannabis, palliative, outpatient, oncology, chart review, symptom profile, demographics
Introduction
Medical cannabis has been in use for thousands of years. In 2737 BCE, Chinese emperor Shen-Nung wrote that cannabis could be used to treat constipation, gout, rheumatism, and absentmindedness (1). The Ancient Egyptians used cannabis to relieve the pain of hemorrhoids (2), the Ancient Indians for insomnia (3) and the Ancient Greeks for tapeworms (4).
Despite medical cannabis' capacity for symptom relief and its legality in many regions (including Canada), it still remains a controversial treatment due in part to its psychoactive components. Consequently, there has been a relatively small amount of research on medical cannabis users. The limited literature available suggests that modern users are primarily middle-aged (5-7), male (5-12), and Caucasian (5-9, 13). The most commonly...