• Curr Opin Anaesthesiol · Aug 2005

    Cannabinoids in anaesthesia and pain therapy.

    • Shahnaz Christina Azad and Gerhard Rammes.
    • Department of Anaesthesiology, Klinikum Grosshadern, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany. shahnaz.azad@med.uni-muenchen.de
    • Curr Opin Anaesthesiol. 2005 Aug 1;18(4):424-7.

    Purpose Of ReviewCannabinoids have been known for their analgesic, anxiolytic, antiemetic and antispastic properties for many centuries. Since an endogenous cannabinoid system has been identified in the past two decades, cannabinoids have also become the focus of interest in western medicine. This review summarizes preclinical and clinical studies on the role of the endocannabinoid system and exogenous cannabinoids in anaesthesia and pain management.Recent FindingsIt has recently been shown that the endocannabinoid system is involved in the effects of the widely used anaesthetic drug propofol. In terms of nociception, preclinical data suggest that the endocannabinoid system plays an important role in the control of synaptic transmission and synaptic plasticity in pain pathways. In patients, the treatment of acute pain often requires relatively high doses of cannabinoids, which are associated with considerable side-effects such as dizziness and sedation. In contrast, preclinical and clinical data suggest that lower doses of cannabinoids may be effective for the treatment of allodynia and hyperalgesia in neuropathic pain. In multiple sclerosis, cannabinoids have been shown to have beneficial effects on spasticity, pain, tremor and bladder dysfunction.SummaryIn general, the results of the very few well-conducted clinical trials often diverge from the highly interesting and promising findings of preclinical studies. Taken together, the most recent preclinical and clinical data suggest that cannabinoids should be applied as low-dose co-analgesics to inhibit neuroplasticity and central sensitization rather than as analgesics in acute pain.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…

What will the 'Medical Journal of You' look like?

Start your free 21 day trial now.

We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will not be shared.