• Janet M Edrington, Steven Paul, Marylin Dodd, Claudia West, Noreen Facione, Debu Tripathy, Peter Koo, Karen Schumacher, and Christine Miaskowski.
• School of Nursing, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143, USA.
• J Pain Symptom Manage. 2004 Sep 1; 28 (3): 225-32.

AbstractWhile chronic pain is experienced by approximately 50-90% of patients with metastatic cancer, little is known about sex differences in chronic cancer pain. Therefore, the purposes of this study, in a sample of oncology outpatients (n=187) who were experiencing pain from bone metastasis, were: 1) to determine if there were sex differences in various pain characteristics, including pain intensity, and 2) to determine if there were sex differences in the prescription and consumption of analgesic medications. No significant sex differences were found in any of the baseline pain characteristics. In addition, no significant sex differences were found in analgesic prescriptions or intake of analgesic medications. Of note, men reported significantly higher pain interference scores for sexual activity than women. The study findings are important because they suggest that, unlike in acute pain, sex may not influence patients' perceptions of and responses to chronic cancer pain.

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