Cancer pain: characteristics and management
Dor no doente com câncer: características e controle

Cibele Andrucioli de Mattos Pimenta¹, Maria Sumie Koizumi², Manoel Jacobsen Teixeira³

Abstract

Fifty seven patients with advanced cancer under treatment in an oncologic unit were evaluated. The analgesic regimen used and the reason for their use were analyzed according of the intensity of the pain. Pain was moderate in most of the patients, and severe in 1/5 of them, lasting 10 months in average. In 40.9% of cases, there was preference for 12 descriptions of pain words of the McGill questionnaire to describe pain. The affective descriptors were more frequently used by patients with pain (p<0,05). Pain control was not achieved by most of the patients. The pain management index was negative in 49.1% of the cases, suggesting that the potency of the analgesics was not adequate to the intensity of pain. There was not correlation between the intensity of pain and the potency of drugs prescribed by WHO. The intensity of pain was lower in patients using analgesics regularly (p<0,05).

Key words: pain; cancer pain; pain assessment; analgesy; pain control; pain management