Patients’ perceptions of the efficacy, safety, and quality of the evidence of medicinal cannabis: a survey of Australian cancer patients.

Abstract

Purpose: 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 explored medical professionals’ perceptions of MC [10, 12,13], to our knowledge there is minimal research exploring patients’ perceptions; particularly in an Australian cancer setting [14,15,16,17]. We therefore aimed to explore patients’ perceptions of the efficacy, safety, and evidence for MC. Methods: A prospective cross-sectional questionnaire of Australian cancer patients attending adult oncology outpatient clinics in the Hunter New England Local Health District. Patients were 18 years, or older, and had a confirmed diagnosis of cancer (solid or haematological). Results: 19% of our cohort were using MC. Despite using for symptom control such as pain (61%), and, in some cases perceived anti-cancer activity (12% to cure and 16% to slow the cancer); a minority of users believed that the evidence for either of these indications was of high quality (28% and 29% respectively). A minority of users (31%) were receiving information on MC from clinicians. Most instead rely on resources such as TV, friends, family, social media and websites. Conclusion: This study demonstrated current real world cancer patients’ perceptions on: the evidence for MC, the sources of information used to shape their health beliefs, and compares users to non-users. The results highlight the need for treating teams to combat potential misinformation that patients may be accessing on MC and provide information on treatments with greater evidence.