Journal of Pain & Relief
Open Access

Abstract

In patients with chronic pain, Breakthrough pain (BTP) is a transient exacerbation of pain that occurs either spontaneously or in relation to a specific predictable or unpredictable trigger despite relative stable and adequately controlled background pain; BTP is usually related to background pain and is typically of rapid onset, severe in intensity and generally self limiting with a mean duration of 30 minutes and has traditionally been managed by the administration of supplemental analgesia at a dose proportional to the total background opioid dose. BTP shows variable prevalence in different clinical contexts both among cancer and non-cancer patients. While the considerable clinical burden of BTP is generally recognized, available common pain assessment tools are insufficient for its identification and diagnostic tools for BTP with demonstrated formalvalidation and prognostic capability are lacking. An innovated approach for BTP diagnosis may come from its prognosis features. Prognosis refers to the risk of future health outcomes in people with a given health condition. Prognosis research seeks to recognize and ameliorate future outcomes in patients with a given health condition and it provides crucial evidence for translating findings from clinical research to clinical practice. A useful prognostic model provides accurate predictions that inform stakeholders, supports clinical research, and allows for informed decisions to ameliorate patient outcomes. We have developed and validated a simple prognostic/diagnostic tool which may easily predict the likelihood of the presence of BTP in patients with potential clinical features of BTP. This has an important impact on therapeutic decisions.

Biography

Boaz G Samolky Dekel works at the University of Bologna Teaching Hospital, Italy, where he is responsible of the hospital chronic and acute pain center. As an Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology, Intensive care and pain Medicine of the University of Bologna, Italy, he does research and teaches Anesthesiology, Intensive care and Pain Medicine at the Bologna?s University Medical School. He graduated cum laude from the University of Bologna school of Medicine and from its postgraduate school of Anesthesia and Intensive care. His main research interests are Post-operative pain control; cancer pain, chronic non-cancer pain; invasive and non invasive analgesia techniques, and public pain medicine evaluation. His research work is nationally and internationally published.