Cannabis vs Oral Cancer Pain

This one is a bit older than what I usually post up, but it is an easy-reading case study about a man with an oral cancer that created a non-healing wound in his cheek. He started vaping for the pain with some good results - his pain levels went from a 9 down to 3 to 4! I skipped the intro and am posting the beginning of the case report. He eventually dies from his cancer, but I found the effects of the cannabis on his symptoms were very interesting.


Medical Cannabis in the Palliation of Malignant Wounds—A Case Report.
(Canada) (full – 2017) DEFINE_ME

Case Report
A 44-year-old man was referred to our consultative palliative medicine clinic with an exophytic (fungating) wound involving his right cheek area. His clinical course over five months of follow-up are summarized in Table 1. Three years earlier, he was diagnosed with a squamous cell cancer of his right buccal cavity. He had the tumor surgically resected, followed by external beam radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Despite this appropriate cancer treatment, he developed a buccal recurrence that eventually eroded through his cheek, creating an oral cutaneous fistula and associated exophytic lesion. Over the two-year period before his referral to our clinic, he had elected to forego further conventional oncologic therapies in favor of mostly naturopathic treatments. Despite using high-dose (names drugs that we can't talk about at GC - GSC) , he continued to experience continuous (background) generalized right hemifacial pain along with volitional incident pain (wound-related procedural pain) occurring with wound dressing changes. He rated his average daily pain score as 9 of 10. In addition, he also reported having side effects from his analgesics, such as constipation and drowsiness. He also reported suffering severe aesthetic distress from his facial disfigurement along with right-sided trismus, depression, insomnia, nausea, and anorexia. In the course of his initial visit, the patient expressed dissatisfaction with his current analgesic regimen and inquired about obtaining MC. After fully evaluating his overall medical status, it was concluded that he had neither contraindications nor likelihood of drug-drug interactions. He also was counseled about potential side effects. Thus, he was offered a trial of vaporized MC (ARGYLE™; THC 7.25% + CBD 8.21%) from TWEED, Inc. delivered through a certified Volcano™ vaporizer unit. The particular strain was strategically chosen to maximize the analgesic potential of both THC and CBD while mitigating against the sedation and psychotomimetic side effects commonly experienced with high-dose THC strains. (Snipped)



One of the good things about this study is that they named the strain of cannabis and gave the THC/ CBD amounts (but they also should have listed the major terpenes, since they affect the effects of cannabis!). Too many studies just talk about using "cannabis"- and researchers will never get consistent results until they start paying attention to the strain and chemical composition of the cannabis they are using!