1607P - Patient perceptions of the efficacy, safety, and quality of the evidence available on medicinal cannabis: A survey of Australian cancer patients - comparing users to non-users

Background

Despite the increased demand [8], and accessibility [5], to medical cannabis (MC) there is a general consensus among physicians that evidence on its efficacy [10,12,13], and safety [4,11], is lacking. Although research has been undertaken to explore medical professionals’ perceptions of the: benefits, risks, and evidence of MC in general [10], and specifically in a cancer setting [12,13]; there is minimal research exploring patients’ perceptions, particularly in a cancer setting [14,15,16].

Methods

We conducted a prospective cross-sectional questionnaire of Australian cancer patients’ attending adult oncology outpatient clinics between April 2019 to March 2020.

Results

350 patients completed the survey; 19% being MC users. Demographics significantly associated with use were male gender (P <.05) and tobacco smoking (P<.01). The most common indication for use was pain (61%). Over 85% of all patients, regardless of using, had accessed some form of information on MC, but only a minority received such information from their healthcare team; relying instead on resources like: friends, TV, and social media. Interestingly, despite using MC, and generally scoring it as highly beneficial, most users “disagreed”, that there was high quality evidence to support this.

Conclusions

To our knowledge, this is the first study exploring cancer patient’s perceptions of: the evidence for MC, the sources of information used to shape their health beliefs, and which directly compares users to non-users. Surprisingly, our results showed that despite using MC, and believing it worked for them as individuals, the majority of users felt the evidence was not high quality. Concerningly, a high proportion of patients believe MC has anti-cancer activity; and are relying on information provided by resources other than traditional healthcare providers, which are considered unreliable [23, 24]. We hope that our results highlight the need for the treating team to combat potential misinformation that patients may be receiving on MC and link them to the palliative care team for treatments with greater evidence.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

University of Newcastle ethics committee.

Funding

University of Newcastle, Calvary Mater Hospital Newcastle and The Hunter Cancer Research Alliance.

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.