Analysis of Severe Pain and its Treatment in a Palliative Care Unit in a Regional Cancer Centre

Objective : Pain is one of the most common symptoms that troubles cancer patients and precludes satisfactory quality of life. Globally, nearly 80% of the cancer patients receive little or no pain medication and cancer pain is barely controlled. This study was done to analyse the prevalence of pain and pain treatment in patients presenting to palliative care unit in a regional cancer centre. Methods : Palliative care registry and follow-up forms of 2142 patients who got registered in our palliative care unit were analysed to obtain the demographic details, treatment characteristics and to determine the prevalence of pain, its severity, and treatment in cancer patients in our regional cancer centre. Results : Nearly 50% of the cancer population had head and neck and gastrointestinal tract malignancies and received only best supportive care. Stage IV disease was found in 40% of patients, and skeletal metastasis (52%) was most common. This study showed a 92.4% prevalence of cancer pain in our centre. About 40% of patients with pain had a pain score of 7-10 by Numerical rating scale on initial presentation to the palliative care unit. About 65% of the patients with severe pain had a response to treatment withmorphine during their first follow-up to palliative care unit after initial registration. The average overall pain score of the patients per visit decreased from around 7 to 4 at a median follow-up of ten months. Significance of results : Thus, there is a high prevalence of pain in cancer patients and patients with severe pain receive little or no opioid medication at all probably due to the lack of adequate education and training to the primary oncologists and residents regarding prescription of strong opioids. This audit may help in the modification of existing and formulation of new policies in the delivery of palliative care.