Total cancer pain contains all pain components. Doctors are able to control it, which is important, because cancer is now not a death sentence, but a chronic disease. Pain relief supports the treatment process and improves the patient's quality of life. How to relieve total cancer pain?

Total cancer painis not easy to control, but you can fight it effectively. The source of cancer pain is not only the tumor itself, which puts pressure on the nerves, causes inflammatory reactions, and poorer blood supply to the tissues.

It is also caused by diagnostics and the treatment itself: operations, radiation, chemotherapy. It is also a consequence of exhaustion of the organism, bedsores or constipation. For such components, the so-called the baseline pain is overlapped by short-term but very severe attacks of breakthrough pain.

Total cancer pain - treatment regimen

Doctors know more and more about cancer pain, which is why the treatment regimen has changed. Drugs are selected individually for each patient. They are given regularly so that their concentration in the blood remains constant.

Drugs are not taken when pain occurs, but like an antibiotic at specified intervals. If they stop working, they turn to be stronger, the doses are increased. Preparations with different mechanisms of action are also combined and adjuvant (complementary) drugs are added, which have a large share in the therapy. Additionally, medications are given to relieve breakthrough pain. If possible, long-acting preparations are selected.

There are also treatments that relieve suffering. Unfortunately, cancer pains are not always effectively treated. This is due to the wrong choice of drugs or their dosages, as well as some resistance from both doctors and patients to the use of opioids associated with drugs. There is still a belief that they can cause addiction, increase the risk of respiratory depression (dangerous breathing disorders).

Meanwhile, with rational analgesic therapy, selection of the appropriate dose and form of the drug, they are safe, and patients who take them are not drug addicts in the colloquial sense of the word. Some people still need them even after cancer has been cured due to post-chemotherapy polyneuropathies or phantom pain. Thanks to them, they can function normally.

Cannabis wpain treatment

What does cannabis contain? They contain chemical compounds with analgesic properties called cannabinoids. Our body also produces them (like endomorphins, the equivalent of morphine), so they are not a foreign substance to it. Currently, cannabinoids are used to treat neuropathic and cancer pain.

Of course, patients do not receive marijuana from doctors, but only drugs containing these compounds. A preparation in the form of an oral spray is registered in Poland.

A plaster instead of a tablet

Some patches work only locally (e.g. warming, cooling, anesthetic patches with lidocaine), others are systemic. The latter are a transdermal form of administration of painkillers, which have their counterparts in the form of tablets. However, they work longer, even for 3-4 days, because the substances they contain are stored in the fatty tissue after they penetrate the skin. From it, they are gradually released into the bloodstream. In the case of such patches, it does not matter where you stick them.

Locks for a painful problem

This is generally a method of injecting anesthetic and anti-inflammatory drugs (steroids) directly into the sore spot (e.g. shoulder or knee joint). Such a treatment temporarily reduces the severity of pain and accelerates tissue healing.

In chronic pain, however, when pharmacological treatment fails, a different form of blockade is used that inhibit pain transmission for a long time. They involve chemical (neurolysis) or physical (thermolesion, cryolysis) damage to a nerve.

How not to overdose on painkillers?

First of all, do not exceed the maximum doses given in the leaflet. If we use more than one analgesic, anti-inflammatory and antipyretic drug at the same time, the composition of the preparations should be compared. They may contain the same active substance, which may result in exceeding the maximum dose, e.g. acetylsalicylic acid contains both etopyrin (for headaches) and polopyrin (for colds).

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Category:

Neurology