title: The prevalence of pain in a pediatric and young adult cancer population.
abstract: The prevalence and nature of pain in the population of children and young adults with malignancy treated by the Pediatric Branch of the National Cancer Institute were assessed over a 6 month period. One hundred and thirty-nine patients were evaluated during 161 in-patient days and 195 out-patient clinic visits. Approximately 50% of the patients assessed in the hospital and 25% of the patients assessed in the out-patient clinic were found to be experiencing some degree of pain at the time of assessment. Therapy-related pain predominated in both in-patients and out-patients; only one-third of the pain experienced by in-patients and less than 20% of the pain experienced by out-patients was due to tumor. Tumor pain was due primarily to bony invasion. In order to control pain in those individuals experiencing pain, narcotic analgesics were being used by one-half of the in-patients and one-third of the out-patients. Overall pain control was good, with the medium visual analogue scale score being 26 mm on a 0-100 mm scale. During the study period 7 patients were identified to have chronic pain for greater than 1 year following eradication of all known tumor from the site of pain. One was receiving massive doses of narcotics (120 mg/day of methadone) apparently out of proportion to his underlying pain.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000700:Analgesics / Q000627:therapeutic use; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007938:Leukemia / Q000503:physiopathology; D008223:Lymphoma / Q000503:physiopathology; D008297:Male; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000503:physiopathology*; D010146:Pain / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000209:etiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D010147:Pain Measurement; D012509:Sarcoma / Q000503:physiopathology
chemical_list: D000700:Analgesics