What is the way to control cancer pain?

  For most people, cancer and the associated cancer pain are far from their lives. But for real cancer patients, the severe pain caused by cancer – cancer pain – is often present all the time and has a significant negative impact on their quality of life. Sometimes cancer pain is related to the progression of the cancer itself, which worsens as the cancer gets worse, and sometimes it is not related to the progression of the cancer itself, which is under control, but the pain is still very severe. In fact, most cancer patients lose their courage to live and fight against the disease because of the severe pain, and finally pass away, leaving their grief to their families. Therefore, the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) believes that for the treatment of early-stage cancer, treating the disease itself is as important as treating the pain; for the treatment of advanced cancer, treating the pain itself is even more important than treating the cancer. To be able to let a patient with advanced cancer pain, who has no hope of cure, leave this world in a peaceful and pain-free state is both a blessing for him and the goal of every pain physician’s work.  The causes of cancer pain are complex, which include both injurious pain, neuropathic pain and inflammatory pain. For different nature of cancer pain, we have different solutions. For example, antiepileptic drugs are used to treat neuropathic pain, Cox-2 anti-inflammatory and analgesic drugs are used to treat inflammatory pain, etc. For some localized pain, such as abdominal pain, chest pain, we can also use abdominal plexus destruction, intercostal nerve destruction, etc. to control pain. In addition to these basic techniques, we have a technique that can be used to manage pain in almost any location – permanent implantation of intrathecal drug infusion systems.  The important characteristic of cancer pain is that it is not fixed in location and can spread and spread. The pain may be in the abdomen today and then in the lower back 3 months later. Therefore, local treatment using a single technique is often ineffective. In contrast, through intrathecal drug infusion system, analgesic drugs are injected directly into the subarachnoid space, which can reduce the drug dosage to 1/300 of the oral dosage and manage cancer pain anywhere in the body. Since the drug dosage is reduced by 2 orders of magnitude, thus the side effects of the drug itself, such as difficulty in urination and defecation, itchy skin, loss of appetite, etc., are drastically reduced.  Well-controlled cancer pain is directly beneficial to cancer patients’ treatment and life cycle extension. On the contrary, if cancer patients are in a state of unbearable pain and mental anxiety and despair for a long time, no one can overcome the disease. Therefore, we hope that all cancer patients should pay attention to the treatment of pain, face the disease with a pain-free and relaxed mind, and overcome the disease.