A retrospective evaluation of cancer pain patients

Abstract

In this study, 663 patients admitted to the Algology Department of our university were evaluated in order to define the patient characteristics, our treatment modalities and complications related to the medications and interventions. The age and sex of the patient, the origin of the neoplasm, the reason, intensity and distribution of pain, the antineoplastic and analgesic therapy taken before inclusion to the study, the treatment modalities performed in our clinic, the routes of administriation, the follow-up duration, the comlications related to the treatment are defined and recorded. The avarage age of the patients were 50 ± 16 years. The origins of the neoplasms were gastrointestinal tract (33.6 %), respiratory system (19.0 %), genitourinary tract (18.1 %). There was metastasis in 78.3 % of the patients. 29.4 % of the patients had only surgical intervention, 9.5 % had chemotherapy, 4.8 % had radiotherapy and 0.3 % had hormonal therapy before coming to our clinic. 38.2 % had two or more antineoplastic therapy. 13.6 % of the patients didn’t have analgesic therapy before us. The most dominant painful region was abdomen (21.1 %). 24.9 % of the patients had pain at more than three regions. In 92.2 % of the patients, the reason of the pain was tumor invasion. 93.2 % had recieved co-analgesics with the analgesic therapy. Main route of analgesic administration was oral route (89.7 %). Most of the patients (84.0 %) came to the clinic 1-5 times for the follow-up. For the medications; nausea, vomitting, pruritus, constipation, urinary retention, for the interventions; contamination, difficulty of dural penetration, obstruction of the catheter, headache, allergy to the port, subarachnoido-cutaneal fistula were the complications we have seen. As a result we believe that in order to have more effective treatment procols and reduce the complication rates, detailed prospective studies with long follow-up times are needed.