Oral Cancer Treatments – Pain Management
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Pain Management for Oral Cancer
Most patients with advanced oral cancer will experience pain during the course of their disease. At Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), we understand that each patient may experience pain differently. Because unrelieved pain can have such a powerful influence on your quality of life, our care team offers a variety of integrative techniques to help mitigate oral cancer symptoms and treatment side effects as much as possible.
All types of pain can be classified as either acute or chronic. The main difference between acute and chronic pain is that acute pain is shorter in duration and easier to identify and manage. Acute pain generally results from tissue damage and, once identified, can be successfully managed. Acute pain normally lasts three months or less, whereas chronic pain is persistent. Because the cause of chronic pain often cannot be altered, your nervous system will adapt, which may cause depression, anxiety and/or insomnia.
Causes
How you experience oral cancer-related pain depends on both physical and psychological factors. Oral cancer-related pain can result from the disease itself, as well as possible side effects of conventional treatment. The site and stage of your oral cancer, as well as whether it has metastasized to other areas of your body, may influence the pain you experience.
Pain is subjective in nature and affects each person differently. Your age, personality, perception, pain threshold and past experiences with pain can all influence the effect of pain, as can psychological factors, such as fear and anxiety. Insomnia and fatigue can also lower the pain threshold, while rest, sleep and diversion can raise it.
Assessment
In order to determine which pain management techniques are best for you during your oral cancer treatment, your CTCA care team will perform a comprehensive assessment. This will help to determine dimensions of your pain, including:
- Its location
- Its intensity
- Factors influencing its occurrence (that is, what makes it better or worse)
- Observed behaviors during pain
- Psychosocial variables (such as attitudes and situational factors)
- Effects of pain
- Effects of therapy and patterns of coping
Pain management
The goal of pain management at CTCA is not only to provide oral cancer patients with relief from pain, but to help them maintain a better quality of life during treatment. Our innovative pain management methods attempt to control the cause of your pain or to alter your perception of it.
Although pain management techniques in general are varied, therapeutic approaches can be classified as either pharmacological or nonpharmacological. Pharmacological pain control involves the use of analgesics (pain-reducing drugs), as well as other medications that intensify the analgesics' effects or modify your mood or pain perception. Nonpharmacological approaches include:
- Behavioral techniques
- Neurological and neurosurgical interventions
- Traditional nursing and psychosocial interventions
- Radiation
- Surgery
Because of the complex nature of cancer-related pain, a combination of techniques may be applied in order to successfully manage any pain you experience during your treatment for oral cancer.
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