[What do we know about the prevalence of pain caused by malignancy?].

BACKGROUND: Since there is no epidemiologic assessment of the frequency of pain caused by tumor in Germany, tumor-pain-prevalence is estimated indirectly on the basis of mortality and median survival. Knowing that about 50% of all patients having metastases or incurable locoregional recurrence suffer from pain every day, the product of median survival times mortality was calculated to achieve the number of patients' days with tumor-caused pain per year (82,710,690 days in Germany 1995). By division with 365 (days), it is calculated that 226,605 patients require tumor pain related treatment at one day in Germany. Another calculation based on Bonica's publications that 60-90% of patients suffering from advanced cancer are having pain and based on an estimated tumor prevalence 1989/90 revealed a tumor pain prevalence of 221,826. DISCUSSION: Thus both methods result in the estimation, that about 220,000 patients require tumor-pain-related treatment at one day in Germany.