Methadone: an effective alternative to morphine for pain relief in cancer patients

Pain management is a central issue in the care of cancer patients in hospice services. Morphine is at present the first line opioid recommended. But when morphine is used in large doses, especially in renal patients, an active metabolite of morphine, morphine-6-glucoronide, may cause delirium and myoclonus and sometimes antagonize the analgesic effect of morphine. Both fentanyl and methadone have some potential advantages over morphine since they are longer-acting and have no active metabolites. However, large doses of fentanyl or long-acting morphine are expensive while methadone has an extremely low cost. We present our retroactive comparative observations in 50 cancer patients. Methadone was found to be as effective as morphine, transdermal fentanyl and common combinations of other opioids in controlling the types of cancer pain presented by patients in a hospice in the Northwestern Region of Puerto Rico. The use of methadone on elderly patients with cancer pain as first line therapy is growing in European and North-American hospices. Hospitals should add methadone to their therapeutic armamentarium and physicians should develop skills to use this long acting opioid.