In September 2016, stakeholders convened for the Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium. The educational and scientific program highlighted state-of-the-art clinical practice and the latest findings in palliative care research.

As a follow up, Pain Medicine News has released a host of brief summaries of pain-related studies presented at the meeting. One summary, Integrated Palliative Care Improves Pain Management in Radiation Oncology, focuses on a retrospective analysis of records at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) showing poor analgesic assessment and pharmacologic pain intervention in patients treated with radiation therapy for bone metastases. After the implementation of a dedicated palliative radiation oncology service at Dana-Farber, rates of both analgesic assessment and pain intervention improved.

“Half of bone metastases patients seen for radiotherapy experienced distressing pain, but only a minority received analgesic assessment intervention,” said Michael A. Garcia, MD, from the Department of Radiation Oncology at UCSF. “Clearly, there is a need to improve acute pain management in radiation oncology.” Click here for more on that study and to read the rest of the informative blurbs.

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