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Abstract:
A holistic pain assessment and management plan for patients with advanced cancer is presented, together with treatment guidelines for each component of the process. The integration of these components into the clinical assessment of patients with cancer pain requires practice and continued clinical review by the attending clinicians. When mastered, the holistic approach should ensure optimum pain management in individual patients, and hopefully avoid some of the pitfalls of therapeutic endeavour. It is suggested that clinicians try to ascribe an approximate 'percentage input' to each component, and weight respective treatment strategies accordingly. An individual algorithm of pain management can then be developed for each patient. If the task is performed to the best of one's ability, we clinicians can rest assured that although not all suffering will be completely relieved, we will have managed the pain relief process in a scientific, rational and humane manner.