Fears of addiction keep cancer patients from getting pain relief

By Randi Belisomo NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Fears of opioid abuse and addiction might be keeping patients with advanced cancer from getting enough pain medicine, researchers say. “At the end of life, we should feel comfortable providing whatever necessary to control pain,” said Joel Hyatt, assistant regional director at Kaiser Permanente. Concerns about overdose and addiction, he told Reuters Health, should not prevent terminally ill patients from obtaining relief. Pain undertreatment is estimated to affect half of cancer patients, according to a recent report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.



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