Management of Pain Syndromes

Abstract

Pain is the overriding fear of the cancer patient. Frequently, those patients who accept the diagnosis of cancer most easily will ask first and foremost: “Doctor, will it be painful?” Actually, in the course of the disease, pain is usually controllable and does not interfere with the patient’s life style. Although patients can be reassured that pain as a terminal event is not common, there are, nonetheless, a number of clinical situations which acutely require pain management and a proportion of patients for whom pain management is the crucial issue in the clinical course.