Effects of bone metastasis on treatment of pain in patients with prostate cancer: a retrospective study

Cancer pain is a multidimensional and complex phenomenon that can cause severe pain and also effects quality of life. Bone metastases represent a common cause of morbidity in patients suffering many types of cancers. Because current therapies increase survival time of many cancer patients, there is an increasing prevalence of metastatic bone disease. Especially, prostate cancer tends to metastasize to bone rather than other organs. Also, they are more likely to have more prolonged periods of pain secondary to bone invasions.Between January 1997-December 2010, patients presented with cancer pain had been retrospectively evaluated at Fırat University Medicine Faculty of Medicine Department of Anesthesiology and Reanimation, Division of Algology.There were 131 patient diagnosed as prostate cancer, 15 patients excluded because of missed data, 12 patients had different metastases sites other than bone. A total of, 104 patients enrolled to this research. Prostate cancer patients without bone metastases were grouped as Group 1, and patients with only bone metastases were included Group 2. Patients? demographic and medical data recorded for statistical evaluation.Patients in group 2, more hospitalized (p=0.000), assessed more minimal invasive pain treatment modality (p=0.000), used more biphosphonate (p=0.034) and calcitonin (p=0.044) than group1. It has explored that higher VAS scores at admission of hospital was associated with higher rate of hospitalization (p=0.000). It?s concluded, bone metastases worsen pain management.