Marijuana Raises Post-Op Dangers After Heart Attack

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Nov. 10, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Election Day 2020 saw marijuana legalization continue its march across the United States, but a pair of new studies warn that smoking pot could increase risk for heart patients.

Marijuana smokers are more likely to suffer complications like excess bleeding or stroke if they undergo angioplasty to reopen clogged arteries , a University of Michigan-led study found.

Pot smokers who've had a heart attack or needed clogged arteries reopened also are at a greater risk of subsequent heart problems, according to a second study based on national hospital data.

Both studies are scheduled to be presented Nov. 13-17 at an online meeting of the American Heart Association (AHA). Findings presented at meetings are typically considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

"As marijuana is becoming more accessible across the U.S., there is a need for rigorous research to better understand the effects of marijuana use on cardiovascular health," said Dr. Sang Gune Yoo, lead author of the first study. He's an internal medicine resident physician.

Arizona, Montana, New Jersey and South Dakota all voted last week to approve recreational use of marijuana, with pot now fully legal in 14 states and the District of Columbia. Voters in Mississippi and South Dakota, meanwhile, approved medical marijuana , making the medicinal use of pot legal in 35 states and Washington, D.C.

But much remains unknown about how marijuana affects people's health, Yoo noted.

For their study, Yoo and his team analyzed data from a statewide registry of more than 113,000 patients in Michigan who had angioplasty between January 2013 and October 2016. Of those, nearly 4,000 patients (3.5%) reported smoking pot within a month of their procedure.

In angioplasty, doctors run a tube up through a patient's arteries to the place where they've become narrowed or blocked, and then inflate a tiny balloon to push open the blockage.

Patients were 54% more likely to suffer from potentially dangerous excess bleeding if they had recently smoked pot, the researchers found.

The patients also were 11 times more likely to suffer a stroke after their angioplasty, although the overall risk remained low, with about 0.3% of marijuana users suffering a stroke.

"The odds are markedly increased. The absolute difference is small, but to the patient who suffers that excess stroke, that's a devastating complication," said study co-author Dr. Hitinder Gurm, associate chief clinical officer at the University of Michigan.

The second study evaluated data from the largest publicly accessible database of U.S. hospitalization records, to see how pot users treated for heart problems tended to fare.

Researchers found that 67% of heart attack survivors who used pot had a subsequent heart attack, compared with 41% of nonusers.

Marijuana users also were more likely to land in the hospital for another round of angioplasty or bypass surgery, the researchers found.

"The frequency of recurrent heart attacks and cardiac interventions was higher among cannabis users, even though they were younger and had fewer risk factors for heart disease ," lead researcher Dr. Rushik Bhuva said in an AHA news release. He's a cardiology fellow with the Wright Center for Community Health in Scranton, Pa.

Not all the data related to pot use was negative, however.

Yoo's study found that marijuana smokers were less likely to suffer acute kidney injury as a result of their angioplasty compared with nonsmokers, and Bhuva's study found that cannabis users had significantly lower rates of high blood pressure , diabetes and high cholesterol.

Researchers said there's still too little known about how marijuana affects the body.

"We know previous studies have shown marijuana affects multiple organ systems in the body, including the heart, including the platelets," Yoo said. "It's an important research question that needs to be further pursued."

Until more is known, patients and doctors should be on alert for potential side effects related to pot, said AHA marijuana expert Robert Page, a professor of clinical pharmacy at the University of Colorado in Aurora.

"I treat cannabis as a pharmacist just like I would any other medication, and when you prescribe any medication, it's going to have drug interactions and side effects," he said.

"Just because something is natural does not make it 100% safe," Page continued. "Therefore we need to be treating cannabis like we would any other medication, and that irregardless of medicinal or recreational, it carries side effects."

Interestingly, in Bhuva's study, cannabis use rose by 250% among patients who had either survived a heart attack or had a procedure to reopen blocked arteries.

Heart patients might instead want to lay off pot, Yoo said, or at least make sure doctors know they use marijuana if they wind up needing another procedure.

"If you are an operator who's doing a procedure, knowing that the patient is at a high risk of bleeding might make you want to consider more strongly some bleeding mitigation approaches," like avoiding strong blood thinners , Yoo said.

More information

Harvard Medical School has more about

marijuana and heart health .

SOURCES: Sang Gune Yoo, M.D., internal medicine resident, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Hitinder Gurm, M.B.B.S., associate chief clinical officer, University of Michigan Health System; Robert Page, Pharm.D., M.S.P.H., professor, clinical pharmacy, Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Colorado, Aurora; online presentation, American Heart Association meeting, Nov. 13-17, 2020

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Scandal MirrorNov 12, 2020Read original

Back in the days, Ernest Obi, actor cum director used to be one of the most-seen Nollywood faces on the screen.

Even those who don't know his name know him by face because he was doing so well in the industry.

He became more popular in 2007 not because of his career this time, but a scandal he would live to remember.

It was one of the biggest scandals that rocked the nation. The actor got entangled in a weighty rape allegation.

His 15-year old stepdaughter, Vennessa who was living with him alleged that he raped her, got her pregnant, and even made her have abortion two different times. Ernest however, claimed the allegations were false.

Ernest and Joanne were married for 10 years, Joanne had Vanessa and her younger brother Emmanuel, for another man before her marriage to Ernest. After their marriage crashed, both parties moved on amicably until the enormous rape accusations.

In a separate interview, Joanne and Ernest told their sides of the story

Joanne's side of the story

First was Joanne (based in the UK...her interview was via phone)

One of the hottest stories in town is the allegation that your estranged husband Ernest Obi, impregnated your daughter, Vanessa, how true is it?

Joanne "It's true. A friend of mine (Titilayo Oyekola) called me that my ex-husband had s3xually abused my daughter and even gotten her pregnant. I didn't believe it, moreso a child he raised, a child who knew no other man as her father but him. 

What happened was that at that point, Ernest had called me that my daughter ran away from. My response was that 'you are in Nigeria, she is your daughter. You don't expect me to leave England to look for her. This is a child you raised yourself, why should she have the effrontery to abscond. I didn't know that something else was happening

I called her and she picked the call. I told her I'm your mother, whatever happened, I will stand by you, but I just want you to tell me the truth. She was crying. Her words were 'I'm not fit to live'.I just don't want to live. I want to commit suicide. 

I said 'you cannot do that to me. There is nothing we cannot handle together. I calmed her down and she told me exactly what happened. She said she made him coffee that morning, he gave her some to drink, after drinking halfway, she said she discovered she was feeling a bit dizzy and dozed off. And Ernest forced his way into her"

Was it a one-off thing or did she tell you about others that he took advantage of her?

"She said mummy I cannot count how many times. I asked where I was the first time it happened and she said 'I was in the hospital ' (At that time I was in Nigeria). I said how long did it continue? She said it went on and on until she took ill. When she took it, she started going to the hospital, finally, she discovered she was pregnant."

Did your daughter tell you the hospital Ernest took her to or the hospital she went on her own?

"She said she went with a girl called Chioma. Ernest knows this girl"

Where's your daughter now?

"Right now, she is in Lagos. She just came back from Ogun State because I told her to go there. She hasn't been to school, I didn't know Ernest was not paying her school fees anymore. So, I sent her to Ogun State."

Don't you think that you didn't handle the matter well when you got the complaint that your estranged husband was allegedly violating your daughter?

"I blame myself for everything that happened. Oh my God! My intention was to come to Nigeria and unravel the whole thing. My plan was to come to Nigeria and hound him behind bars. If it were in England, he would suffer. I failed in my duty to protect my child because I didn't believe her father would violate her."

How long were you married to Ernest?

"officially we were married for ten years. And we have two children together. I have two other kids from another man, Vanessa, and Emmanuel"

How long ago did you leave his house?

"I left Nigeria on November 6, 2004"

How is your daughter handling the situation, considering that it has become a public issue now?

"A lot of stress. All through yesterday, she was crying, I was crying. I cried because it will not go out of her for the rest of her life"

When was the last time you spoke to Ernest?

"That was this week (Last week). He said there was a publication in Encomium on the front page. He said you guys wrote that he impregnated Vanessa twice and aborted the pregnancy. He called me again yesterday and said he had lost a contract of N36m. He said he just won Chairmanship of AGN, that he wanted to go ahead and resign, that Vanessa said he raped her constantly. I said yes, Vanessa said so!"

What about Vanessa's father?

"I didn't have the nerve to tell him. He lives in Lagos. He is aged"

When you confronted Ernest about this allegation, was he remorseful?

"He was not remorseful"

When did Vanessa tell you that Ernest had been violating her?

"It was in November last year. From what I understand, she ran away from home last year

You knew about this since last year, how come the press is just getting to know about the story now?

"First of all, I was too embarrassed. Too ashamed of what happened. I didn't know what to do?

When you were in Nigeria, did you at any time suspect them?

"No, I never. There was no sign of anything at all"

Considering the situation of things now, are you making plans to come to Nigeria to see one or two things you can do to remedy the situation?

"Three times I had tried to come to Nigeria, once in February, July and last in October but I had a lot of problems. Actually because of my kids here. The social services wanted to know who my kids are going to be with."

You said your daughter told you she will commit suicide, don't you think it would be nice to come back as early as possible so that she can stop thinking about that drastic step?

"Yes, I actually told somebody that if it means moving back to Nigeria, I will do it. I will do it (Starts crying).

Ernest Obi's side of the story

According to Encomium, on Saturday, Dec 1, 2007, the star actor kept his words by coming to our office. And he was here for over three hours, explaining why he couldn't have slept with a girl he calls his daughter. Ernest Obi, at a point, broke down and cried. And this much he said; 

"I will start first and foremost by saying that whatever they told you, go ahead and print it. Do not remove a word from whatever they said. I do not want to join issues with them. I just want you to realise something. The same man she's painting as being evil, who she said raped or slept with Vanessa severally is the same man she went to when she has nowhere to go. When nobody wanted to accommodate her, I took her in with two kids who are not mine. I took them in, trained them in school, I even trained the boy in University in my house, even after Joanne left.

"She left me and we knew it was over. So whatever story she tells, well, that's too bad. And they still were in my house for two years after she left. Does that not tell her anything? Because there was nowhere else for them to go. If it makes her happy to say things like this, I say more grease to her elbow".

"But if I was Joanne, and heard that my daughter was raped, I will come back home and lock that person up. That is what I expected she should have done. That is why I said she is the lovely mother that she is. Joanne, pls come home, com and find out the fact; find out the hospital where the D&C was done. Where I took her for abortion, bring your witnesses, arrest me, and I will not argue with you. I will not say anything evil about you"

"I'm the new AGN (Actor's Guild of Nigeria) Chairman in Lagos. There is nothing anybody can do about that. I have reported this to my guild, national, and state and I'm sure they believe in me as I believe in myself. whatever anybody says that is their business. I'm saying this out of respect for this magazine, for calling me to hear my own side of the story.

And I'm happy it is all out. I didn't want to say anything before because there are children involved, but now it is obvious it does not matter. She can go on, keep the shame factor on. I'm okay. God bless you"

After he quietly dealt with the scandal, Obi seems to be living a new life. In 2018, the actor and his wife welcomed a new baby boy which he joyously announced on his Instagram page.