Cannabis Consumers’ Lungs Still Good for Transplants
Ever since the stigma of cannabis use has started to fall away, so have a lot of the myths about cannabis being unhealthy. In fact, studies have shown that there is no strong link between cannabis and issues like lung cancer. Taking this one step further, a recent study points to evidence that lungs from an ex-cannabis user can still be used successfully in transplanting.
According to a study from the European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery, there was no significant difference in the short- and medium-term outcomes of lung transplants between cannabis users and non-users. For the study, 302 transplants were studied over a six-year period. 283 of the donors were not cannabis smokers, and 19 were.
“We retrospectively analyzed lung ‘organ offers’ and [lung transplantation] (LTx) at our centre between January 2007 and November 2013,” the study describes. “The outcomes of LTx utilizing lungs from donors with a history of cannabis smoking were compared with the outcomes of those with no such history using unadjusted model as well as propensity score matching.”
The study revealed that there was no noticeable difference in the one-to-three-year survival rate for transplant recipients, whether or not their donors had used cannabis. In simple terms, donors did not seem to be at risk because their new lungs had a history of cannabis use.
“The history of donor cannabis smoking does not appear to affect early and mid-term outcomes after LTx and potentially improve the donor pool,” the study concluded, “As it does not seem to negatively affect the outcomes after LTx, it should not be per se considered a contraindication for lung donation.”
Of course, this was only one study with reasonable limitations, and much more general research needs to be done to gain completely conclusive evidence on how cannabis affects lungs for donors. So far, however, there is no evidence that there are any issues with getting new lungs from someone who used to use cannabis.
