The Treatment Of Breast Cancer - 1134 Words

Breast cancer affects so many women around the world. Even with the technology and medicine we have today to treat this deadly disease, the pain a patient experiences with breast cancer is still relentless. Pain comes from either progression of the disease or a side effect from treatment. In this article they talk about the role of the WHO’s three step analgesic ladder and how the administration of opioids for breast cancer patients experiencing pain effect ones psychological state and their quality of life. Since many patients experience negative side effects from opioids, there becomes a need to develop therapeutic modalities. Overall, the main purpose of the article was to focus on current treatments that provide pain management for†¦show more content†¦Unfortunately, many of these ways are through pain medications called non-opioid, weak opioid, and strong opioid. As the opioid gets stronger the higher the chance of intolerable side effect can occur. Side effects from different opioids are known to cause a decrease in the quality of life for a breast cancer patient. How does one choose a medication to deal with pain at different levels? The WHO’s ladder for relief of cancer pain was developed for this reason. In short, if you have minimal pain you will receive non-opioids. Once the non-opioids do not help and pain continues to increase, strong opioids will be administered. It’s a stepping ladder; each step in the progression of cancer has a certain medication to deal with that stage of pain. Because of the need for pharmacotherapy in breast cancer patients, the patient will undergo limitation. The patient can experience nausea and vomiting, gastric disturbances, renal dysfunction are common, as well as respiratory depression has been known to occur while on opioids. Patients need the pharmacotherapy to deal with pain and kill their cancer, but those opioids really affect a person’s essence of life. Luckily, there are also non-pharmacological therapies a patient can participate in. Yoga, acupuncture and musical therapy are great examples of these. In my opinion, the author didn’t have a perspective in this article. The purpose of this article was to bring attention to the