• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.238-247
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• 2004

Purpose: Pain management is often needlessly suboptimal. Health care professionals are seldom trained in pain management, may not realize the importance of pain management or recognize that a patient is in pain, and may fear prescribing opioid medications. Noting that one of the problems related to health care professionals is poor assessment of pain, we studied a trend of pain severity and satisfaction with pain controls after using TTS-fentanyl in order to determine whether a regular pain assessment was effective for controlling cancer pain. Methods: We assessed the pain as a $5^{th}$ vital sign after using TTS-fentanyl in 471 hospitalized cancer patients during 4 days. The data were collected from September, 2003 to December, 2003. Pain severity was assessed by using a numeric pain intensity scale($0{\sim}10$) by ongoing pain assessment. Results: Pain assessment as a $5^{th}$ vital sign had led to reduce patient's pain scores. High degrees of satisfaction scores in both patients and doctors with TTS-fentanyl were observed. They were also negatively correlated with the pain severity. Conclusion: Regular pain assessment was effective in the management of cancer pain.

• Radiation Oncology Journal
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.263-271
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• 2006

$\underline{Purpose}$: To evaluate the effectiveness and safety of fentanyl-TTS in the management of radiotherapy induced acute pain and cancer pain treated with radiotherapy. $\underline{Materials\;and\;Methods}$: Our study was open labelled prospective phase IV multi-center study. the study population included patients with more 4 numeric rating scale(NRS) score pain although managed with other analgesics or more than 6 NRS score pain without analgesics. Patients divided into two groups; patients with radiotherapy induced pain (Group A) and patients with cancer pain treated with radiotherapy (Group B). All patients received 25 ug/hr of fentanyl transdermal patch. Primary end point was pain relief; second end points were change in patient quality of life, a degree of satisfaction for patients and clinician, side effects. $\underline{Results}$: Between March 2005 and June 2005, 312 patients from 26 participating institutes were registered, but 249 patients completed this study. Total number of patients in each group was 185 in Group A, 64 in Group B. Mean age was 60 years and male to female ratio was 76:24. Severe pain NRS score at 2 weeks after the application of fentanyl was decreased from 7.03 to 4.01, p=0.003. There was a significant improvement in insomnia, social functioning, and quality of life. A degree of satisfaction for patients and clinician was very high. The most common reasons of patients' satisfactions was good pain control. Ninety six patients reported side effect. Nausea was the most common side effect. There was no serious side effect. $\underline{Conclusion}$: Fentanyl-TTS was effective in both relieving pain with good tolerability and improving the quality of life for patients with radiotherapy induced acute pain and cancer pain treated with radiotherapy. The satisfaction of the patients and doctors was good. There was no major side effect.