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Prevalence, distress, management, and relief of pain during the last 3 months of cancer patients' life - Italian mortality follow-back survey

Annals of Oncology Advance Access published online on January 22, 2009
Annals of Oncology, doi:10.1093/annonc/mdn700

© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Society for Medical Oncology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Prevalence, distress, management, and relief of pain during the last 3 months of cancer patients' life. Results of an Italian mortality follow-back survey

M. Costantini^1,*, C. Ripamonti², M. Beccaro¹, M. Montella³, P. Borgia⁴, C. Casella⁵ and G. Miccinesi⁶

¹ Regional Palliative Care Network, National Cancer Research Institute, Genoa
² Palliative Care Unit, IRCCS Foundation, National Cancer Institute, Milan
³ Department of Epidemiology, National Cancer Research Institute, G. Pascale Foundation, Naples
⁴ ASP Lazio, Rome
⁵ Liguria Cancer Registry, Descriptive Epidemiology, National Cancer Research Institute, Genoa
⁶ Clinical Epidemiology, Center for the Study and Prevention of Cancer, Florence, Italy

^* Correspondence to: Dr M. Costantini, Regional Palliative Care Network, National Cancer Research Institute, Largo R. Benzi, 10 16132 Genova, Italy. Tel: +39-010-5737482; Fax: +39-010-354103; E-mail: massimo.costantini@istge.it

Background: This study estimates prevalence, management, and relief of pain during the last 3 months of life of a representative sample of dying cancer patients in Italy.

Patients and methods: This is a mortality followback survey (the Italian Survey of the Dying of Cancer). Caregivers were interviewed, after the patient's death, about pain experienced by the patients in all settings of care.

Results: According to caregivers' reports, 82.3% [95% confidence interval (CI) 79.9% to 84.4%] patients experienced pain, and 61.0% (95% CI 57.9% to 64.0%) very distressing pain. The younger population experienced a higher prevalence of pain in respect to older patients (P <> central nervous system experienced the lowest prevalence (51.9%). According to caregivers' reports, only 59.5% (95% CI 3.7% to 65.0%) received analgesic treatment with opioids for moderate to severe pain. Not surprisingly, pain was ‘only partially relieved’ or ‘not relieved at all’ in 54% of the patients with very distressing pain.

Conclusions: Although potentially slightly biased, the results from this survey regarding undermedication and poor treatment results for cancer related pain are unequivocal. The research agenda should focus on testing the effectiveness of interventions to improve the quality of pain assessment and management.

cancer, effectiveness, opioids, pain, prevalence, treatment

Received for publication March 25, 2008. Revision received August 1, 2008. Accepted for publication October 7, 2008.