Pain Management for Pancreatic Cancer

Supportive Therapies for Pancreatic Cancer Patients: Pain Management

Advanced cancer causes pain in most patients. Your Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) care team is extremely aware that unrelieved pain can significantly diminish your quality of life.

There are typically two types of cancer pain: acute or chronic. Acute pain generally results from tissue damage, is of limited duration, and can be successfully managed once the cause of pain has been identified. Chronic pain, on the other hand, is persistent, usually lasting more than three months. Because chronic pain's cause often cannot be altered, your nervous system will adapt, which may cause depression, anxiety and/or insomnia.

Causes

The severity and prevalence of pain you may experience depends on a number of factors, including the site and stage of your disease and the location of metastases. Cancer-related pain can result from both the disease process and pancreatic cancer treatment.

Pain affects each person differently, depending on several factors, including age, personality, perception, pain threshold, and past experiences with pain. In addition, psychological factors such as fear, worries or knowledge of impending death can influence the effect of pain. Insomnia, fatigue and anxiety may lower the pain threshold, while rest, sleep and diversion can raise it.

Assessment

An accurate assessment of your personal pain experience provides a basis for evaluating various pain management techniques. A comprehensive assessment includes information about the following dimensions of your pain:

• Intensity
• Location
• Observed behaviors during pain
• Factors influencing its occurrence (i.e., what makes it better or worse)
• Effects of pain
• Psychosocial variables (e.g., attitudes, situational factors)
• Effects of therapy and patterns of coping

Pain management

The goal of pain management is two-fold: your team not only focuses on your relief from pain, but also the maintenance of your normal quality of life. All pain management methods attempt to either control the cause of the pain or alter your perception of it.

Although there are multiple and various pain management techniques for pancreatic cancer and its treatment, therapeutic approaches are classified as either pharmacological or nonpharmacological. Pharmacological pain control involves the use of analgesics in conjunction with other medications that intensify the analgesics' effects or modify your mood or pain perception. Nonpharmacological approaches include the following:

• Surgery
• Radiation
• Behavioral techniques
• Neurological and neurosurgical interventions
• Traditional nursing and psychosocial interventions

The latter measures attempt to promote your comfort and evaluate the effectiveness of the therapy. Because cancer-related pain is complex in nature, successful management usually involves a combination of both pharmacological and nonpharmacological techniques.

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