It may seem like a drag — pardon the pun — to stop smoking marijuana before surgery and to not smoke during your recovery from surgery, but you will heal faster, return to your normal activities more quickly, have less scarring and fewer complications if you refrain.
Unfortunately, research on the topic of marijuana use and the effects during surgery is limited but should become more plentiful in the future as medicinal marijuana has been legalized in multiple states (and recreational use in a growing number), making it easier to gather scientific data on the topic. We do know that marijuana, while effective for decreasing nausea and some other health-related benefits, has the potential to interact with anesthesia.
Like nicotine, marijuana can complicate surgery and should be avoided in the weeks and even months prior to your procedure. Much like smoking cigarettes, abstaining from marijuana in the weeks before surgery can decrease the likelihood of complications during and after surgery.
The use of marijuana the day before surgery, and especially in the hours prior to the procedure, can cause more dramatic effects. While some people are tempted to use marijuana prior to surgery in an effort to relax or be less stressed before the procedure, this is a very bad idea and can cause problems.
Smoking marijuana regularly leads to the same risks of complications faced by patients who smoke cigarettes. This means that marijuana smokers are more likely than non-smokers to be on the ventilator longer, have a higher risk of developing pneumonia after surgery, and greater scarring of incisions.
Marijuana causes the blood vessels of the body to relax, a process called vasodilation. This process can cause the blood pressure to fall and the heart rate to increase. These, in turn, can complicate matters if the patient’s blood pressure is falling due to issues with the surgery, and can change the way the body responds to anesthesia.
If you smoke marijuana and are planning to have surgery you may be wondering if you need to stop smoking before your procedure. Like smoking cigarettes, the short answer is this: Yes, quitting today may improve your surgical outcome, how quickly you get out of the hospital and how quickly you heal after surgery.
The use of marijuana, especially immediately prior to surgery, can change the doses needed for sedation. One commonly used medication, Propofol, requires substantially higher doses for the patient who routinely uses marijuana.
Regular marijuana use, like cigarette and cigar use, can increase the length of time it takes to be removed from the ventilator after surgery. The risk of being on the ventilator long term is decreased by quitting smoking before surgery, and that risk is decreased further with every day that passes between the last day of smoking and the day of surgery.
Smoking pot before surgery can cause problems during and after your procedure, find out why you should avoid marijuana before surgery.
But, “that’s more speculation than we really know,” Uppington says. “The bottom line is, if you’re a chronic user of marijuana, you are more resistant to anesthetics, both those that put you to sleep, like propofol, and those that keep you asleep, like various anesthesia gases.”
Awakening mid-wisdom tooth extraction was eye-opening for Jennie. Since her doctor didn’t ask her specifically about her drug use, and she didn’t think smoking weed wouldn’t matter for her surgery, she didn’t mention it; in fact, she worried that if she did, she wouldn’t be allowed to undergo the procedure. “In the future, I would definitely inform my doctor of my cannabis use,” she says.
Why marijuana increases your need for anesthesia remains unclear, largely because of its status as a federally illegal drug, which makes it difficult to research, Jeffrey Uppington, an anesthesiologist at UC Davis Medical Center, tells Mic. It’s possible that compounds in weed called cannabinoids — which tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, which is responsible for making you feel high) — affect the same receptors in the brain and spinal cord as anesthesia drugs do.
Jennie had been smoking weed at least once a day for the past four years. She smoked with her fiancГ© the day of her wisdom tooth extraction. “I had no idea it was going to affect the anesthesia,” says the 35-year-old, who lives in Arizona. (She requested that Mic publish only her first name out of concern for the legal repercussions of her weed use, since Arizona prohibits recreational cannabis.) Indeed, as legalization sweeps across the country, evidence has emerged that regular marijuana users need more anesthesia for surgery than non-users to ensure they become, and stay, sedated and don’t awaken mid-procedure. In plain, very urgent, English: If you consume cannabis on the reg, you need to let your doctor know before you go under for surgery.
Jennie’s wisdom tooth extraction left her so groggy that she needed to be transported to her car by wheelchair, and she doesn’t remember anything from the 45-minute ride home. As her fiancГ© drove, she drifted in and out of sleep, and didn’t feel like herself again for another three hours. In contrast, a friend she drove home after a dental procedure was a little groggy, but could walk to his car and felt fine when he got home, probably because he wasn’t a cannabis user, and therefore didn’t require as much anesthesia.
If you do smoke cannabis regularly, tell your anesthesiologist how much and how often, as well as the last time you smoked, Uppington says. They can then assess whether your use could increase your risk of being resistant to anesthesia and make adjustments accordingly.
Thanks to modern-day monitors that measure brain waves and other vitals, an anesthesiologist can likely spot when a patient is about to awaken and give them more drugs before they reach that point, Uppington says. But even if you don’t wake up during a procedure, you can still have issues. If you routinely smoke weed, your airway might be more reactive during anesthesia. You might cough more, experience bronchial spasms, and/or have a more active gag reflex, which is a problem if you need to be intubated, as with general anesthesia (the kind that puts you to sleep).
After surgery, you might also experience more pain, which may nudge you toward using more opioids and increase your risk of addiction to these substances, says David Hepner, the medical director of the Weiner Center for Preoperative Evaluation at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an associate professor of anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School.
No matter how often you consume cannabis, though, don’t use it at all on the day of your procedure, Hepner says. Taking an edible on the same day poses the added risk of inhaling it, which may result in a life-threatening lung infection called aspiration pneumonia. And if you come into the clinic high AF, you can pretty much count on your surgery being cancelled. Uppington recommends hitting pause for as many days as you can before your surgery, ideally a month, which is how long it takes for cannabis to be fully removed from the body.
One day in 2016, Jennie awoke to sharp pain and a tugging sensation on the left side of her jaw — "like my jaw was being pulled off my head," she recalls — along with the firm pressure of hands holding her mouth agape. She opened her eyes just…
