Medical marijuana use can be associated with severe cardiovascular complications, including hemodynamically unstable ventricular tachycardia and myocardial infarction, even in young patients without traditional risk factors.
Medical marijuana may trigger unstable VT without classic risks; this Level 5 case leaves open causality and should not change practice.
This article presents the case of a 29-year-old male patient, addicted to prescribed medical marijuana administered for mixed anxiety and depressive disorder and without classic cardiovascular risk factors and history of myocarditis, suffering from episodes of paroxysmal hemodynamically unstable ventricular tachycardia. Cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging of the heart revealed disseminated non-ischemic myocardial injury lesions of subepicardial and intramuscular location. Additionally, the individual experienced myocardial infarction without ST segment elevation following marijuana intake. Treatment required implantation of a cardioverter-defibrillator and ablation of the myocardial areas responsible for the origin of the arrhythmia, as well as appropriate pharmacotherapy and marijuana addiction treatment.
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Wiliński et al. (2022) studied this question.
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