The legalization of recreational cannabis across Canada has revealed the importance of medical education on cannabis-related topics. A recent study has indicated that Canadian physicians report a significant gap in current versus desired knowledge regarding the therapeutic use of cannabis. However, the state of education on cannabis has never been studied in Canadian medical schools. This article presents the preliminary findings of a survey conducted to understand the perceptions of Quebec’s medical students regarding cannabis-related teachings in their current curriculum. Overall, students reported very low to low levels of exposure to, knowledge of, and comfort levels with cannabis-related subjects. The majority of students reported that they felt that their medical curricula did not prepare them to face cannabis-related issues in their future practices. Strategies need to be developed for improving medical school curriculum regarding cannabis-related issues. These findings provide potential key strategies to improve curricula.
Transsphenoidal surgery (TSS) is a frequently used technique to remove pituitary adenomas. Rare complications of TSS include development of postoperative pneumocephalus. Many patients undergoing TSS also suffer from obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and thus require positive pressure ventilation. The exact timing of when to safely reintroduce the CPAP machine in this subset of patients is presently not exactly known but is most often cited as being two to four weeks postoperatively. In this case, we describe the story of a 69-year-old female who underwent TSS for a nonsecreting pituitary adenoma in April 2012 and went on to develop pneumocephalus five weeks postoperatively after reintroduction of her CPAP machine. This is the latest presentation of pneumocephalus after reintroduction of CPAP documented in present literature. The case reopens the debate as to how many weeks postoperatively positive pressure ventilation should be withheld to prevent the development of pneumocephalus in patients having undergone TSS with simultaneous OSA.
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