Pain From Breast Cancer Remedy Can Linger For Years, Study Finds
December 29, 2011
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Nearly half of all breast cancer patients experienced chronic discomfort two to 3 years after remedy and a lot more than half felt discomfort, according to a study by Danish researchers published Tuesday within the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New York Times reports. The study located that females younger than age 40, those who underwent radiation remedy and those who had surgery to eliminate lymph nodes in the armpit are most likely to knowledge lingering pain.
In an accompanying editorial, Loretta Loftus, a senior member of the breast cancer program at the Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, wrote, “This must alert clinicians who’re caring for these patients to pay much more attention to those who are within the high risk groups for pain” (Caryn Rabin, New York Times, 11/10).
Researchers examined a 2009 survey of 3,253 Danish ladies who had breast cancer surgery in 2005 and 2006, Reuters reports. Forty-seven percent of the patients reported discomfort. Inside that group, 13% described the discomfort as severe, 39% described it as moderate and 48% said it was light. Twenty percent of the girls surveyed said they had contacted a physician within the last 3 months relating to their pain (Brown, Reuters, 11/10). Girls of all ages who had mastectomies were more likely to have severe pain than light pain. Discomfort most regularly occurred inside the breast that was operated upon, inside the chest location exactly where tissue was removed, in the upper arm exactly where lymph nodes were removed or along one side of the body, based on U.S. News & World Report‘s “On Ladies.”
“This study isn’t saying to change therapy recommendations based on whether or not a certain therapy is most likely to be associated with discomfort,” Loftus said, adding, “But it’s telling oncologists that they need to be a lot more alert towards the incidence of pain,” she stated (Kotz, “On Females,” U.S. News & World Report, 11/10). The study’s author, Henrik Kehlet of the University of Copenhagen, said a lot more research is needed to determine why some ladies encounter lingering pain and others do not (Szabo, USA Today, 11/11).
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