Pain Management for Stomach Cancer

Stomach Cancer Treatment: Pain Management

It is common for most patients with advanced stomach cancer to experience pain during the course of their disease. At Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), our care team understands how unrelieved pain can significantly diminish your quality of life. That is why we offer a variety of integrative pain management therapies to help mitigate and control pain related to stomach cancer symptoms and/or associated treatments.

Stomach cancer-related pain may be classified as either acute or chronic. Of limited duration, acute pain generally results from tissue damage. Once the cause of pain has been identified, it can be successfully managed during your stomach cancer treatment. Chronic pain can last several months in duration. Because the cause of chronic pain 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 during your stomach cancer treatment depends on many factors, including the site and stage of your stomach cancer, as well as the location of metastases. Cancer-related pain can result from the disease process itself, in addition to stomach cancer treatments (e.g., surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy).

Pain affects each patient differently. Influencing factors include age, personality, pain threshold, past experiences with pain and psychological influences, such as fear, anxiety and insomnia. Fatigue and anxiety can negatively influence a patient’s pain threshold, while rest, sleep and diversion can improve it.

At CTCA, we understand that no two patients will experience pain in the same way. This is why we work to evaluate your unique needs as a patient before integrating any type of pain management into your stomach cancer treatment plan.

Assessment

In order to understand which pain management techniques will best work with your stomach cancer treatment plan, we will first conduct a comprehensive assessment to evaluate the following dimensions of your pain:

• Location
• Intensity
• 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

Pain management should help you experience as normal of a quality of life during stomach cancer treatment as possible. Our methods of pain management will attempt to either control the cause of pain you are experiencing, or alter your perception of it.

Although many and varied, all therapeutic approaches to pain management can be classified as either pharmacological or nonpharmacological. Pharmacological pain control involves the use of analgesics, as well as other medications that intensify the analgesics' effects or modify your mood or pain perception. Nonpharmacological approaches include:

• 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 of the complex nature of cancer-related pain, successful management of stomach cancer-related pain usually involves a combination of techniques.

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