Experts: Current pain treatment not sufficient for cancer patients

Experts: Current Pain Treatment Not Sufficient for Cancer Patients

Pain is one of the most common complaints among chemotherapy recipients. Often they are not receiving enough treatment for that pain according to the International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics, the official journal of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology. Cancer patients experience severe pain not only from their disease itself but also as a result of their cancer treatment.

To determine the reasons for the inadequate pain treatment, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Department of Radiology Oncology in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the Radiation Oncology Branch of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland developed an online questionnaire that asked patients specific questions in regards to pain management strategies. The questions asked assessed their pain medication usage, control over their pain and their overall feelings about taking pain medications.

Of the patients studied, 58% stated their pain was directly related to their cancer treatment while 46% said their pain was from the disease itself. Of these, 80% said they took no medication to manage their pain.

When asked why they did not use pain medication most patients stated that no medicine was ever discussed with them by their physician. Other reasons respondents gave for not using pain medications were worry of dependency and addiction or because they felt they could not afford those medications.

Alternative treatments for pain management such as acupuncture, massage and physical therapy were reported in the study as being used by patients to help manage pain.

"To eliminate barriers to optimal pain management for cancer patients, healthcare providers should talk with their patients about pain symptoms and pain medications," Charles Simone, M.D., a resident at the National Cancer Institute Radiation Oncology Branch in Bethesda, Md. and lead author of the study, said. "At our institution we have taken these steps by transitioning to an electronic medical record system that has been designed to require an evaluation and documentation of patient pain levels and pain medication responses by healthcare providers at each patient encounter."

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