Overview

Cancer patients may feel pain from tumors, surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation therapy. Although more severe pain is felt by advanced cancer patients, many cancer survivors have chronic pain that continues after cancer treatment ends.

Cancer pain can be managed effectively in most patients with cancer or with a history of cancer. Although cancer pain cannot always be relieved completely, therapy can lessen pain in most patients. Pain management improves the patient's quality of life throughout all stages of the disease.

Flexibility is important in managing cancer pain. As patients vary in diagnosis, stage of disease, responses to pain and treatments, and personal likes and dislikes, management of cancer pain must be individualized. Patients, their families, and their health care providers must work together closely to manage a patient's pain effectively.