• Sunil X Raj, Morten Thronaes, Cinzia Brunelli, Marianne J Hjermstad, Pål Klepstad, and Stein Kaasa.
• European Palliative Care Research Centre, Department of Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway, sunil.raj@ntnu.no.
• Support Care Cancer. 2014 Jul 1;22(7):1965-71.

PurposeSystematic knowledge about the prevalence and the treatment effects of cancer pain in patients attending a general oncology outpatient department is limited. The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence of pain in a large representative cohort of patients attending a general oncology outpatient department in order to guide further screening, classification, and treatment of pain.Material And MethodsA cross-sectional study among patients visiting the outpatient clinic with histologically verified cancer, age≥18 years, adequate cognitive function, and no surgical procedures last 24 h were included. Pain was assessed by the Brief Pain Inventory and the Alberta Breakthrough Pain Assessment Tool.ResultsThree hundred five patients were included. The mean age was 60 years, 94% had a WHO performance status of 0-1 and 59% received oncological treatment with a curative intent. The mean score for average pain last 24 h (numerical rating scale, 0-10) and current pain was 1.84 and 1.08, respectively. Twenty-two percent reported pain score of ≥4 as their average pain in the previous 24 h. Twenty-one percent reported breakthrough pain (BTP). In multivariate analyses, sleep, BTP, age, treatment intent, and comorbidity was significantly associated with mean average pain in the previous 24 h and explained 29% of the variability of average pain in the previous 24 h.ConclusionOf the patients at an oncology outpatient clinic, 22% reported clinically significant pain. These findings indicate that all patients are candidates to be screened for pain and, if present, a more detailed pain diagnosis should be established before any interventions can be recommended.

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