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A new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis identified 199,565 emergency department (ED) visits involving cannabis hyperemesis syndrome (CHS) in the United States from January 2023 through May 2026 and found that new coding helped to document patient cases of CHS. Researchers evaluated the time period before and after October 1, 2025, when the dedicated ICD-10-CM diagnosis code for CHS (R11.16) went into effect. The introduction of the ICD-10 code provided a direct way for clinicians to document the condition instead of combining nausea codes with cannabis use codes. Data demonstrated that CHS-related visits remained relatively stable through September 2025, averaging 3.19 per 10,000 ED visits. However in the first 30 days after introduction of the CHS-specific diagnosis code, the rate immediately increased from 3.35 per 10,000 visits in September to 11.26 in October. From the time of the code introduction through May 2026, the monthly average was 11.97 CHS cases per 10,000 visits—that’s 3.7 times the average in the time period before the ICD-10 code introduction. The authors caution that the increase likely reflects improved recognition and coding rather than a sudden increase in CHS incidence.
Who presents with CHS? Rates of CHS were highest among patients aged 15–24 years (38.70 per 10,000), followed by those aged 25–34 years (28.28 per 10,000). It may be somewhat surprising that females had higher rates than males (12.65 vs 11.13 per 10,000). Find out more about evaluating nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain when considering CHS in urgent care in the JUCM archive: Emesis Ad Nauseum: A Case Report of Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome in Urgent Care