Abstract:

Cancer is a chronic disease that affects patients quality of life, hence the need to evaluate the quality of care in its globality without forgetting cancer pain. This study aims to acknowledge the pain in cancer patients, evaluate it using international scales, and see to what extent this pain is managed in its totality. This is a prospective study to evaluate the quality of cancer pain management, 60 patients were included, 26 women and 34 men, with an average age of 52.2 years. The evaluation of pain concerned different cancer pathologies, according to the simple verbal scale and the visual analog scale, the majority of our patients (83.4%) had pain, 68.4% had moderate to severe pain, the use of level III analgesics occurred in 35% of patients. Among our sample 37% of cancer patients had negative pain management index scores, indicating inadequate analgesic treatment. This study shows that the management of cancer pain is still insufficient for reasons of organization and lack of information. This situation cannot be improved without the establishment of a global strategy for the management of cancer pain.

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