• Markus Ramm, Man Long Chung, Kathrin Schnabel, Alexander Schnabel, Johanna Jedamzik, Michaela Hesse, Michaela Hach, Lukas Radbruch, Martin Mücke, and Rupert Conrad.
• Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Münster, Münster, Germany. Electronic address: markus.ramm@ukmuenster.de.
• J Pain Symptom Manage. 2024 Nov 4.

ContextPalliative care aims to improve the quality of life in patients with progressive diseases such as cancer. Effective cancer pain management is a major challenge of palliative treatment. Empirical data on the prevalence of cancer pain, the efficiency of pain treatment and influencing factors are scarce.ObjectivesHere, we investigated pain in cancer patients treated on inpatient palliative care wards in Germany.MethodsN = 4779 data sets provided by the German Palliative Care Registry from yearly evaluation periods between 2015 and 2020 were included. Pain ratings were assessed by professionals through a checklist of symptoms and problems (HOPE-SP-CL).ResultsMore than half of the included patients suffered from moderate/severe pain at the beginning of inpatient palliative care and in 71% of these patients, pain relief was achieved at the end of inpatient treatment. Pain intensity, depression and ECOG performance status at admission were weak predictors of later pain relief. The highest pain intensity at the beginning and least pain relief were found in patients with bone and cartilage cancer. The highest percentage of adequate pain control (81%) was seen in 2020.ConclusionData from the German Palliative Care Registry confirmed that although increasingly better addressed over the years, insufficiently controlled cancer pain remains a challenge for palliative care units. Patient-specific (e.g. psychological comorbidity) and cancer-related (e.g. bone or cartilage cancer) risk factors for poor pain treatment underline the need for individualized multimodal pain management including psychological support.Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.

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