WHO Analgesic Ladder: Chronic Pain Management
Content Overview
Professor Mike Bennett was appointed as the first Professor of Palliative Medicine at Lancaster University in October 2007. He completed an MD in 1999 resulting in the LANSS Pain Scale, an internationally used tool for identifying neuropathic pain. From 2003 he established and directed the Leeds Pallium Research Group and has published widely on a number of pain and palliative care topics. He is chair of the National Cancer Research Institute palliative care clinical studies group and chairs the host committee for the EAPC 2010 Research Forum. In 2006, he was invited as Visiting Professor to MD Anderson Cancer Centre, Houston USA. His main research interests relate to cancer pain, neuropathic pain and psychological distress.
In this presentation Mike looks at the research surrounding the management of cancer pain in community, secondary and palliative care settings. He then examines the similarities between the WHO analgesic ladder for cancer pain and parallel guidance from the European Association of Palliative Care. The comparison of their guidelines is then examined against the available evidence with some thought provoking conclusions.
