How are cancer pain patients treated?

  In our daily life, people often talk about cancer. Once a person suffers from cancer, it means that his life will be terminated soon, but what makes people fear more is the pain that cancer brings to the patient’s life. Statistics from home and abroad show that the incidence of pain associated with cancer patients increases with the progress of the disease and the degree of pain increases. 50% of all cancer patients have pain of different degrees, and 70%-90% of patients in advanced stages experience pain.  The most common treatment for cancer pain is the WHO-promoted pharmacological three-step therapy, which can provide pain relief in about 70-90% of patients. However, cancer pain in the progressive stage of cancer is difficult to treat because of the destruction of body structure and nerve damage, and the pain is severe. Some patients experience satisfactory pain relief when they are inactive, but pain when they move, which is very painful for patients, and new pain is added due to the emergence of bed sores from long-term pressure. Some patients have unbearable side effects after taking medication and have difficulty in adhering to analgesic drugs. Intrathecal implantable drug infusion system, i.e. morphine pump, is now internationally recognized as the best solution for the treatment of advanced cancer pain. This method is simple and can provide strong analgesia with few side effects, and does not even affect the patient’s daily life.  Morphine pump: A special catheter is placed in the subarachnoid space, and then a pain pump – a programmable morphine slow-release pump – is implanted under the patient’s skin (mostly placed in the lower abdomen), and the catheter is connected to the pump by means of a subcutaneous tunnel. The pump’s infusion system delivers the drug into the subarachnoid space continuously, slowly, and at a uniform rate. It achieves analgesia with only 1/300th of the oral dose and does not create a dependence on morphine. In addition, the amount of morphine output can be remotely adjusted outside the body according to the degree of pain and the pattern of attack after surgery, so as to meet the analgesic needs of different patients to the maximum extent.