Expert Tip:
◆ Describe your real pain to your doctor in detail.
◆The control of cancer pain needs your own confidence and participation.
◆Most cancer pain can be controlled through standardized three-step pain relief therapy.
◆WHO recommends strong opioid DD preferred for severe cancer pain is morphine (morphine is safe for cancer pain and there are almost no addicts. Guo Quan, Department of Oncology, Xiyuan Hospital, Chinese Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine
Cancer pain is a big problem. Many advanced patients do not think about eating and drinking and cannot sleep because of having cancer pain, which can be described as painful and inexplicable. Of course, having cancer pain does not mean that it is already advanced; some early stage cancer patients can also have pain symptoms. There are many misconceptions and perceptions around the issue of cancer pain, we will clear the fog and answer them one by one.
I. General knowledge about cancer pain
What is the meaning of ⒈ pain?
Pain is actually a kind of signal, which is a reflection of our body’s reaction to some adverse phenomena. This is not a play on words, but a real fact. The so-called undesirable phenomena can be external or internal. Anyone who has been stabbed by a needle, burned by fire, or scalded by water knows that it hurts, which prompts us to avoid these external undesirable stimuli. Intrinsic adverse factors that cause pain are more common, and I believe that everyone has had such pain, such as headaches caused by colds, abdominal pain caused by eating bad food, etc. When pain occurs, we naturally think of going to the hospital to see a doctor. For cancer patients, pain is sometimes the only symptom in the early stage. If we pay attention to it and follow the vine to find the source of pain, we may be able to detect the presence of cancer at an early stage.
Piece of cake what is pain
Experts define it as “pain is an unpleasant sensation and emotion associated with real or underlying tissue damage, or described in terms of damage. Biologists have found that all those stimuli that can cause pain are prone to cause tissue damage. Thus, pain is a feeling associated with real or potential tissue damage.”
These words seem literary, tightly worded and abstract in content, how should we understand them? For a person with a disease, the focus is on the word “feeling”. Yes, feelings! People are very complex creatures, and their reactions to the same stimulus are different, let alone different people and different diseases, these two factors are twisted together in a thousand different ways? So whether you are in pain or not, how much it hurts and where it hurts is up to you to decide, not someone else other than you.
How Cancer Pain Affects People
As the name implies, cancer pain is short for cancer pain. Cancer pain is a major cause of physical and emotional disorders in cancer patients. Patients with cancer pain often have very poor appetite, limited mobility, depression, and in short, a severely reduced quality of life. Statistics show that the vast majority of cancer patients have had cancer-related pain throughout the course of their illness. Some people lose their confidence in living and choose to end their own lives because of the persistent unrelieved pain. This shows that cancer pain has become a different kind of “killer”.
Singing the classification of cancer pain
In order to clarify how to assess and what it means, and to facilitate the reader’s understanding of what follows, we have to talk about the classification of cancer pain. Since the content is rather specialized, we will not explain the terminology used in this article, as you can just take a look at it.
Experts classify cancer pain into the following 4 categories.
(1) Directly caused by cancer itself
It is the most common, accounting for about 70% to 80%, due to tumor invasion or compression of nerve tissue, invasion of bones, or invasion of cavernous organs such as stomach and intestine, or obstruction caused by pipes of solid organs such as liver and kidney, obstruction or invasion of blood vessels, invasion or ulceration of mucous membrane, and increase of intracranial pressure. Treatment is based on anti-tumor, palliative and analgesic treatment.
(2) Tumor-related pain
It is not directly caused by tumor, but has obvious correlation with the occurrence and development of tumor, such as pain caused by activity disorder due to cachexia and other factors, decubitus ulcer, muscle spasm, constipation and so on. The treatment is mainly symptomatic and pain relief treatment.
(3) Treatment-related pain
Pain caused by some invasive diagnostic and therapeutic measures, such as bone marrow aspiration, pathological biopsy, lumbar puncture and other operations; scar pain, nerve injury, phantom limb pain caused by surgery; neuropathy, embolic phlebitis, oral mucositis caused by chemotherapy; local damage, peripheral nerve injury, fibrosis, radiomyelitis, etc. caused by radiotherapy. It accounts for about 10% to 20%, and the treatment is based on pain relief and corresponding treatment.
(4) Pain not related to tumor
It accounts for about 8% of the pain caused by other diseases, such as osteoarthritis, rheumatism, gout, diabetic peripheral neuralgia, etc. The treatment of the primary disease is the main focus.
Generally, when we talk about cancer pain, we are referring to the first major type of pain, that is, pain directly caused by cancer itself.