Pain and Treatment of Pain in Minority Patients With Cancer: The Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group Minority Outpatient Pain Study

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Clinics that primarily see members of ethnic minority groups have been found to provide inadequate treatment of cancer-related pain. The extent of undertreatment of pain in these patients and the factors that contribute to undertreatment are not known. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the severity of cancer-related pain and the adequacy of prescribed analgesics in minority outpatients with cancer. DESIGN: Prospective clinical study. SETTING: Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group. PATIENTS: 281 minority outpatients with recurrent or metastatic cancer. MEASUREMENTS: Patients and physicians independently rated severity of pain, pain-related functional impairment, and pain relief obtained by taking analgesic drugs. Analgesic adequacy was determined on the basis of accepted guidelines. RESULTS: 77% of patients reported disease-related pain or took analgesics; 41% of patients reporting pain had severe pain. Sixty-five percent of minority patients did not receive guideline-recommended analgesic prescriptions compared with 50% of non-minority patients (P less than 0.001). Hispanic patients in particular reported less pain relief and had less adequate analgesia. CONCLUSIONS: The awareness that minority patients do not receive adequate pain control and that better assessment of pain is needed may improve control of cancer-related pain in this patient population.