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Radiation Oncology pp 1–11Cite as

Pain Management

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Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to give an overview on pain management in patients treated in radiation oncology. This chapter addresses the diverse symptom complex of pain in patients suffering from advanced cancer, while these symptoms may or may not be clearly associated with radiotherapy. Pain is one of the most challenging and most important symptoms among cancer patients and poses a complex problem with many different components, e.g., emotional, physical, and social, and may cause considerable distress and suffering throughout the course of disease and the applied therapies.

Radiotherapy may be utilized to relieve symptoms of pain; some patients have preexisting pain resulting from the advanced disease or from comorbidities. However, pain may also be an important side effect of different therapeutic approaches, also of radiotherapy. Therefore supportive strategies should be interdisciplinary and equally multimodal to address this complexity. This chapter focuses on proposing practical advice for optimizing pain management in radiation oncology based on actual guidelines and reviews (Leitlinienprogramm Onkologie (Deutsche Krebsgesellschaft, Deutsche Krebshilfe, AWMF): S3-Leitlinie Palliativmedizin für Patienten mit einer nicht heilbaren Krebserkrankung, Langversion 1.0, 2015, AWMF-Registernummer: 128/001OL, http://leitlinienprogramm-onkologie.de/Palliativmedizin.80.0.html, 2015; Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schmerzmedizin (DGS) PraxisLeitlinie Tumorschmerz V 2.0, https://dgschmerzmedizin.de/praxisleitlinien/Tumorschmerz.pdf, 2014; Sawhney et al., Guidelines on Management of Pain in Cancer and/or Palliative Care. Cancer Care Ontario, https://archive.cancercare.on.ca/common/pages/UserFile.aspx?fileId=384144, 2017; Fallon et al., Ann Oncol 29(4):iv149–iv174, 2018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Medizinische Klinik m.S. Hämatologie, Onkologie und Tumorimmunologie, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Virchow-Klinikum, Berlin, Germany

    Anne Flörcken

  2. Interdisziplinäres Zentrum Palliativmedizin, Klinik und Poliklinik für Strahlentherapie, Universitätsklinikum Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    Carmen Roch & Birgitt van Oorschot

Authors
  1. Anne Flörcken
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  2. Carmen Roch
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  3. Birgitt van Oorschot
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anne Flörcken .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiation Oncology, University Hospital Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

    Frederik Wenz

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Flörcken, A., Roch, C., van Oorschot, B. (2019). Pain Management. In: Wenz, F. (eds) Radiation Oncology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52619-5_113-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52619-5_113-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-52619-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-52619-5

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