Is It Really Impossible to Cope with a Cancer Patient’s Pain?

Pain is one of the most common and most feared complaints in patients with cancer. Despite advances in cancer medicine, the frequency of cancer-related pain has not decreased over the years. On average, 60% of cancer patients experience cancer-related pain at some point in their disease.

Worldwide, insufficient importance is given to the problem of cancer-related pain. Although modern medicine offers many drugs and interventional methods to relieve pain, half of patients suffering from cancer-related pain are inadequately treated.

Why is insufficient importance given to cancer pain?

There are certain barriers that prevent adequate pain treatment. Some of these barriers originate from healthcare professionals, while others originate from patients or their relatives.

• Originating from healthcare professionals, the most common barrier is inadequate pain assessment and poor knowledge of pain treatment.
• Originating from patients, examples of barriers include negative thoughts about painkillers and concerns about side effects.
• Some circumstances preventing adequate pain treatment originate from both healthcare professionals and patients. These are poor communication, inability to discuss the cancer diagnosis and the dying process, and prejudice against narcotic analgesics, called opioid phobia.

We have much more knowledge about pain than in the past, and more pain relief options are available to us than ever before. Nevertheless, cancer patients do not receive adequate pain treatment because treating cancer pain is not simple and linear; many factors (knowledge about pain, options, beliefs, culture and genetics) affect pain management.

In conclusion, the first requirement in combating cancer pain is adequate assessment. Of course, even before this, the patient needs to be aware of their disease and able to express themselves comfortably about it. It can be said that adequate pain assessment is performed for inpatients in oncology clinics experienced in cancer and treating large numbers of patients; however, worldwide, tools assessing the pain patients experience outside hospital had not existed until now. Computer software and mobile phone applications developed in recent years are candidates to fill this important gap.