Latin-American Guidelines for Cancer Pain Management

Abstract

Cancer is a major public health issue. Poor pain management has devastating consequences that seriously affect quality of life, diminish functionality and place a huge emotional burden on patients and their relatives. A group of Latin American opinion leaders were invited to participate in a meeting to discuss areas associated with cancer pain. The expert panel reviewed the latest literature to draft region-specific guidelines for effective pain management. The guidelines make recommendations on tailoring treatment to the specific type of pain and provide local physicians with the state-of-the art findings in the field. Management should be with pharmacological approaches (nonopioid, adjuvant and opioid analgesics, as well as oncologic therapies and interventional procedures) and nonpharmacological approaches.

KEYWORDS:

• analgesics
• cancer pain
• Latin America
• opioids
• pain control

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Grünenthal Services, Inc. for their support with the logistics of our meeting.

Disclosure

None of the authors of this manuscript received any professional fees whatsoever from Grünenthal Services, Inc. Grünenthal Services, Inc. provided logistical support for the experts.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement withany organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Editorial assistance was provided by Content Ed Net, Madrid, Spain, with funding from Grünenthal Services, Inc.

Notes

Data taken from [7,8].

Data taken from [7–11].

NRS: Numerical rating scale; VAS: Visual analog scale; VRS: Verbal rating scale.

Data taken from [13,16–17].

Data taken from [36].