Over the last few decades, cancer has been the leading cause of death worldwide. It is also the most common reason for requesting assistance in dying due to fear of loss of function, leading to the loss of autonomy, and fear of a painful death. Cancer pain management using appropriate opioids and dignity-conserving care is the need of the hour to relieve the fear arising due to poor pain management. Cancer pain is not a single entity and depends on multiple factors related to the host as well as the disease.
This pain is caused by cancer itself or by cancer treatments and can be managed effectively with adequate knowledge and accessible therapies. The World Health Organisation has proposed an analgesic ladder (Figure 1) for cancer pain management. However, this is not a stepwise approach for cancer care but a conceptual model . Beginning with low doses of step 3 (“strong”), an opioid…
