U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

NCBI Bookshelf. A service of the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.

WHO Guidelines for the Pharmacological and Radiotherapeutic Management of Cancer Pain in Adults and Adolescents. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2018.

Cover of WHO Guidelines for the Pharmacological and Radiotherapeutic Management of Cancer Pain in Adults and Adolescents

WHO Guidelines for the Pharmacological and Radiotherapeutic Management of Cancer Pain in Adults and Adolescents.

Show details

ANNEX 8Glossary

Adjuvant:

Medicines other than opioids, paracetamol or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) that may help to relieve pain alone or in combination with opioids, paracetamol or NSAIDs. Typically used for neuropathic pain refractory to opioids, paracetamol or NSAIDs or when opioid therapy is contraindicated.

Breakthrough pain:

Transitory flare of pain despite pain treatment around-the-clock.

Clinical trial:

An experiment performed on human beings in order to evaluate the comparative efficacy of two or more therapies.

Co-formulation (of analgesia):

This is a packaged medicine which contains two or more analgesic drugs packaged together as a single medicine.

Immediate-release medicine:

Medicine that has rapid onset of action and short duration of action.

Non-opioid:

Substances that relieve pain without acting on opioid receptors (see Opioid).

Older persons:

Persons older than 60 years.

Opioid:

Substances derived from the opium poppy or synthesized that act on opioid receptors in the central or peripheral nervous system to produce pain relief.

  • Weak opioid: opioid with weak pain relief effect.
  • Strong opioid: opioid with strong pain relief effect.
  • Opioid rotation: switching from one opioid medicine to another for a therapeutic purpose.

Rescue dose:

An extra dose of pain medicine to treat breakthrough pain (see Breakthrough pain).

Slow-release medicine:

Medicine that has a slow onset of action and long duration of action.

Trial of therapy:

A clinical decision to provide a medicine or treatment of potential (but unproven) benefit to an individual patient to assess if there is a beneficial response.

© World Health Organization 2018.

Sales, rights and licensing. To purchase WHO publications, see http://apps.who.int/bookorders. To submit requests for commercial use and queries on rights and licensing, see http://www.who.int/about/licensing.

Third-party materials. If you wish to reuse material from this work that is attributed to a third party, such as tables, figures or images, it is your responsibility to determine whether permission is needed for that reuse and to obtain permission from the copyright holder. The risk of claims resulting from infringement of any third-party-owned component in the work rests solely with the user.

Some rights reserved. This work is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO licence (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/igo).

Under the terms of this licence, you may copy, redistribute and adapt the work for non-commercial purposes, provided the work is appropriately cited, as indicated below. In any use of this work, there should be no suggestion that WHO endorses any specific organization, products or services. The use of the WHO logo is not permitted. If you adapt the work, then you must license your work under the same or equivalent Creative Commons licence. If you create a translation of this work, you should add the following disclaimer along with the suggested citation: “This translation was not created by the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO is not responsible for the content or accuracy of this translation. The original English edition shall be the binding and authentic edition”.

Any mediation relating to disputes arising under the licence shall be conducted in accordance with the mediation rules of the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Bookshelf ID: NBK537480

Views

Recent Activity

Your browsing activity is empty.

Activity recording is turned off.

Turn recording back on

See more...