Cannabis Use and Heart Transplantation: Disparities and Opportunities to Improve Outcomes

Abstract

Heart transplantation (HT) remains the optimal therapy for many patients with advanced heart failure. Use of substances of potential abuse has historically been a contraindication to HT. Decriminalization of cannabis, increasing cannabis use, clinician biases, and lack of consensus for evaluating patients with heart failure who use cannabis all have the potential to exacerbate racial and ethnic and regional disparities in HT listing and organ allocation. Here‚ we review pertinent pre-HT and post-HT considerations related to cannabis use‚ and relative attitudes between opiates and cannabis are offered for context. We conclude with identifying unmet research needs pertaining to the use of cannabis in HT that can inform a standardized evaluation process.