Abstract
Pain is a common symptom in cancer patients, restricts daily life activities and reduces survival time. Identification of sociodemographic, medical and psychological correlates of pain among cancer patients in Germany could help identify subgroups most in need of pain management. In this multicenter, epidemiologic cross-sectional study, we assessed pain prevalence and severity, quality of life (QoL) and psychological distress in a sample of 3,745 cancer patients across all tumor entities. In total, 37.9% patients suffered from cancer-related pain and 56.1% suffered from non-specific pain. Younger, female, less educated and unemployed patients reported pain more frequently and more severe pain (p < 0.001). Pain was associated with distress, depression, anxiety, QoL, tumor stage (p < 0.001), and time since diagnosis (p = 0.012). Pain assessment and pain management should be a routine part of cancer treatment and cancer survivorship care plans.
Highlights
Pain is common among cancer patients and it is one of the most feared symptoms of cancer
We assessed pain prevalence and severity in a large, representative sample of cancer patients in Germany and found that 37.9% of cancer patients suffer from cancer-related pain (CRP)
Our results are to a large part in accordance with the extensive review by van den Beuken-van Erverdingen et al [13] who reported that 37.2–64.1% of cancer patients suffer from pain
Summary
Pain is common among cancer patients and it is one of the most feared symptoms of cancer. Prevalence studies have demonstrated that pain still affects 37–64% of cancer patients [1, 2]. Studies show that pain in cancer patients remains under-estimated and under-treated [4,5,6,7,8]. The negative impact of pain on overall survival has been demonstrated for prostate cancer and is suspected for several other types of cancer [9,10,11]. A large metaanalysis by Quinten et al [12] found that pain was a prognostic factor for shorter survival, in addition to sociodemographic and clinical factors. Self-reported pain gives additional information on how far the cancer has progressed and has complementary predictive value to sociodemographic and clinical variables
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