Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment (Apr 2024)
Traumatic Brain Injury Outcomes After Recreational Cannabis Use
Abstract
Jerzy P Szaflarski,1 Magdalena Szaflarski2 1Department of Neurology, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), Heersink School of Medicine, Birmingham, AL, USA; 2Department of Sociology, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), Birmingham, AL, USACorrespondence: Jerzy P Szaflarski, Department of Neurology, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Heersink School of Medicine, 312 Civitan International Research Center1719 6th Avenue South, Birmingham, AL, 35294-0021, USA, Email [email protected]: Basic science data indicate potential neuroprotective effects of cannabinoids in traumatic brain injury (TBI). We aimed to evaluate the effects of pre-TBI recreational cannabis use on TBI outcomes.Patients and Methods: We used i2b2 (a scalable informatics framework; www.i2b2.org) to identify all patients presenting with acute TBI between 1/1/2014 and 12/31/2016, then conducted a double-abstraction medical chart review to compile basic demographic, urine drug screen (UDS), Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), and available outcomes data (mortality, modified Rankin Scale (mRS), duration of stay, disposition (home, skilled nursing facility, inpatient rehabilitation, other)) at discharge and at specific time points thereafter. We conducted multivariable nested ordinal and logistic regression analyses to estimate associations between cannabis use, other UDS results, demographic factors, and selected outcomes.Results: i2b2 identified 6396 patients who acutely presented to our emergency room with TBI. Of those, 3729 received UDS, with 22.2% of them testing positive for cannabis. Mortality was similar in patients who tested positive vs negative for cannabis (3.9% vs 4.8%; p = 0.3) despite more severe GCS on admission in the cannabis positive group (p = 0.045). Several discharge outcome measures favored the cannabis positive group who had a higher rate of discharge home vs other care settings (p < 0.001), lower discharge mRS (p < 0.001), and shorter duration of hospital stay (p < 0.001) than the UDS negative group. Multivariable analyses confirmed mostly independent associations between positive cannabis screen and these post-TBI short- and long-term outcomes.Conclusion: This study adds evidence about the potentially neuroprotective effects of recreational cannabis for short- and long-term post-TBI outcomes. These results need to be confirmed via prospective data collections.Keywords: cannabis, traumatic brain injury, Glasgow Coma Scale, GCS, outcomes, modified Rankin Scale, mRS
