Pain articles within Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology

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• Review Article | 04 December 2018

  Balancing opioid analgesia with the risk of nonmedical opioid use in patients with cancer

  Patients with cancer might be at a higher risk of nonmedical opioid use than was previously thought; however, opioid analgesics remain the gold standard to treat cancer-related pain. The authors of this Review examine the role of opioids in cancer-related pain, the risk of substance use disorder and methods to achieve the right balance between both to ensure safe opioid use.

  • Joseph Arthur
  •  & Eduardo Bruera

• Review Article | 16 March 2010

  Treatment of painful bone metastases

  Painful bone metastases can be treated with radiotherapy, and single-fraction radiotherapy with 1 × 8 Gy has been shown to be as effective for pain relief as multi-fraction regimens. The authors discuss why single-fraction radiotherapy is considered the standard regimen for uncomplicated painful bone metastases without pathological fractures or spinal cord compression, and highlight the reasons why long-course multi-fraction radiotherapy should be reserved for patients with a relatively favorable survival prognosis.

  • Dirk Rades
  • , Steven E. Schild
  •  & Janet L. Abrahm