Is there any difference between pain management in elderly women with end-stage cancer and elderly women with no cancer under palliative care?

Is there any difference between pain management in elderly women with end-stage cancer and elderly women with no cancer under palliative care?

Chapter 1: Introduction

Background

The ageing population and technological advances in modern medicine have resulted in chronic of some illness, such as end-stage cancer, neurodegenerative, renal deficiency, heart diseases and lung diseases. It has been recorded that western population is facing a continuous increase of median life span and it is expected that the percentage of older women aged 60 years and above will reach up to 15.2% in the year 2030 (Davies and Higginson, 2012). Elderly patients with chronic disease may experience a number of unbearable physical and psychosocial symptoms before they die. This is the reason that elderly especially women who are physically weak, suffer unpleasant pain and suffering during the last stage of cancer. This unbearable pain arises when symptoms are not being diagnosed or treated appropriately.

Pain is an unpleasant and emotional experience associated with tissue damage. Pain among cancer patients is not yet treated effectively by medical professionals (Pain relief for Palliative Care, 2012). It has been recorded that 25 to 50% of community-dwelling aging people experience unbearable and significant pain and around 50% of patients who are seriously ill are hospitalized due to low tolerance to the pain. Many elderly women and their caregivers do not complaint about the pain that the patients are suffering because they think that pain is the part of aging population. Therefore, it is important for healthcare professionals to help cancer patients in managing pain and diagnose the cause of pain and its symptoms and provide palliative care accordingly. There are some curable treatments like palliative care is possible in early stage of cancer but in later stage; patients have to suffer pain in their end stage of life (Delgado-Guay and Bruera, 2008). The main purpose of palliative care is to improve the quality of life and relive patients who are suffering chronic or serious illness. Rare in elderly pain can be treated causally. The surgical procedures have in some cases this possibility.

Pain management strategies are effective if the patient can deal with drugs and heavy pain killers but elderly women cannot take these heavy medicines during their last stage and seems to be physically weak. On the other hand, elderly women with no cancer but have serious illness with palliative care are likely to suffer less as compare to those who are at the end stage of cancer (Hughes, 2012).

Significance of the problem

Among many aging women with cancer is diagnosed late, understated and insufficient treatment. It has been realized that pain is the common symptom among these population and is often undiagnosed or poorly controlled by healthcare providers. There are many reasons that are responsible for this lack of treatment include not only underreporting but also have problems in communicating or cognition of pain ...