Nationwide Trends in Hospitalizations and Outcomes of Pulmonary Circulation Disorders Among Patients With Cannabis Use Disorder in the United States

• Published in: Curēus (Palo Alto, CA) CA), 2022-03, Vol.14 (3), p.e22897-e22897
• Main Authors: Jain, Akhil, Gandhi, Zainab, Desai, Rupak, Mansuri, Uvesh, Rizvi, Bisharah, Alvarez, Melissa, Gupta, Puneet
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Age; Amphetamines; Anemia; Cardiology; Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; Cocaine; Diabetes; Drug addiction; Family income; Health maintenance organizations; Heart attacks; Heart failure; HMOs; Hospitalization; Hypertension; Hypothyroidism; Internal Medicine; Length of stay; Liver diseases; Males; Marijuana; Medicaid; Metastasis; Mortality; Patients; Pulmonary hypertension; Smoking; Substance Use and Addiction; Trends
• ISSN: 2168-8184; 2168-8184
• DOI: 10.7759/cureus.22897

Background and objective The use of cannabis through smoking and vaping has increased significantly over the past decade. However, the prevalence of pulmonary circulation disorder (PCD)-related hospitalizations among cannabis users and their outcomes remain poorly understood. In this study, we used a nationally representative sample to assess the prevalence and trends of hospitalization among cannabis users with PCD. Methods The National Inpatient Sample (NIS) datasets (2007-2014) were used to analyze hospitalizations of patients with cannabis user disorder with PCD (C-PCD arm) versus those without PCD (C-non-PCD arm) to ascertain demographics, comorbidities, and in-hospital outcomes including all-cause mortality and healthcare resource utilization. Results A total of 3,307,310 hospitalizations involving cannabis users were reported, of which 20,328 (0.61%) were related to PCD. We noted a 200% relative increase in hospitalizations in the C-PCD arm (linearly increasing from 0.3% to 0.9% from 2007 to 2014, p