Adolescent marijuana use linked to increased time to union after fracture surgery
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Marijuana use resulted in increased time to union in surgically treated pediatric patients with fractures, according to an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in pediatrics.
Grant D. Hogue, MD, presented findings of his retrospective chart review on marijuana use and pediatric bone health at the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America Annual Meeting, which was held as a virtual meeting.
“The incidence of marijuana use among adolescents is on the rise in the United States,” Hogue said in his presentation. “So, the goal of our paper was to identify the impact of marijuana use on fracture healing in pediatric adolescents.”
Using trauma registry data from 2010 to 2018, Hogue administered urine drug screenings to 673 patients aged 10 years or older who sustained fractures. The final analysis consisted of 268 patients, 173 who were surgically treated and 95 who were received nonoperative care.
“What we were able to find is that we could not establish a correlation with marijuana use and a significant increase in time to union in our nonoperatively treated patients,” Hogue said.
“When we look at our univariate analysis, we can see an association between marijuana use, as well as alcohol use, and an increase in time to union in surgically treated patients,” he said. “And then when we do our regression analysis, we can see that there is actually a correlation between marijuana use as well.”
Hogue also noted that 16% of patients in the study group tested positive for marijuana metabolites, while 6% tested positive for ethanol.
“So, I think we are very much seeing an evolution of the substance of choice – and substance of availability – for young people,” Hogue said. “But the fact of the matter is, that this is a retrospective study, and studying illegal substances in young people has a lot of limitations. So, we need further studies in the laboratory,” he added. – by Max R. Wursta
Reference: Hogue GD, et al. Paper 59. Presented at: Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America Annual Meeting; May 13, 2020 (virtual meeting).
Disclosure: Hogue reports no relevant financial disclosures.
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