The Challenge of Cancer Pain Assessment.
Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: It is estimated that up to 80% of cancer patients experience disease related pain, and an estimated 65-80% of cancer patients with advanced disease suffer pain so severe that it negatively impacts their activities of daily living, disrupts their sleep pattern, depresses their mood and interferes with normal social functioning and relationships.1-3 Furthermore, uncontrolled pain delays healing and recovery, leading to poorer outcomes for cancer patients.4 Cancer pain can be well controlled in up to 90% of cases5, but current evidence suggests that almost half of cancer patients in the developed world receive sub-optimal pain management.1 The leading barrier to well controlled cancer pain is its inadequate assessment and reassessment.6 Despite this being widely understood, cancer pain remains a prevalent problem.
In this essay I will examine the leading challenges of cancer pain assessment including the complex nature of cancer pain, barriers to patient reporting, ineffective communication of pain and physician and systematic failures. In doing so, I aim to identify how cancer pain assessment can be improved in the future.
Source: Europe PMC (PubMed Central)
Author: Christopher Cluxton
Language: English
Subfield: Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2994017974