APS 2010 Chronic Cancer Pain

At the 29th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Pain Society, Perry G. Fine, MD, of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, defined breakthrough pain as “a transitory pain that lasts seconds or hours, is more severe than the background pain and has a negative effect on function or quality of life.”

Grinding, crushing, crisping, soaking, stirring. These are just some of the techniques drug abusers use to extract opioids from prescription medications. The question is, can opioids be formulated to deter abuse? That was the question addressed by a panel of presenters during the American Pain Society’s 29th Annual Scientific Session here.

Appropriate patient selection for opioid use is critical to ensuring patient safety and minimizing the risks associated with opioid use. Healthcare professionals should therefore understand not only their patients’ needs but also the concept of Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS), which can help prevent inappropriate opioid use.

A new brief outcomes instrument will soon be available for assessing pain in individual patients that can also be used in the research setting, those attending the Pharmacotherapy Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting at the American Pain Society’s 29th Annual Scientific Meeting learned.

A pilot study designed to understand how preferences for analgesic treatment for cancer pain vary between African Americans and whites found that each group may employ different heuristics in making decisions, despite having similar levels of education and health literacy, according to data presented at the American Pain Society’s 29th Annual Scientific Meeting.

Presence of pain is often the first sign of cancer; approximately 20% to 75% of patients present with pain at the time of diagnosis. . At the 29th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Pain Society, Christine Miaskowski, RN, PhD, FAAN, of the University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, Calif., highlighted the importance of evaluating cancer pain etiologies as well as interindividual variability when managing cancer patients with pain.

That there are differences in cancer pain among survivors, based on socio-demographic characteristics, was the hypothesis of a study of disparities in cancer pain conducted by Carmen R. Green, MD, of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and colleagues. The study was presented at The American Pain Society’s 29th Annual Scientific Meeting.

There is growing evidence that the way individuals cope with and appraise disease-related pain (e.g. arthritis pain and cancer) is not only related to their experience of pain but also to their physical and psychological functioning. Presenting at the American Pain Society 29th Annual Scientific Meeting, Francis J. Keefe, PhD, from Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., reviewed the latest research in behavioral and psychosocial factors in pain and pain management.