JULY 19, 2016

GIs Face Growing Patient Interest in Cannabis

When patients with bowel problems ask about cannabis, gastroenterologists need to be prepared with the straight dope. “We get questions from … patients all the time” about medical marijuana, said Adam Cheifetz, MD, director of the Center for Inflammatory Bowel Disease [IBD] at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston.

A 2014 study found that between 16% and 50% of IBD patients report using cannabis to