Innovation in pain management

In: Wellcome Witnesses to Twentieth Century Medicine: Vol.21. The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL: London. (2004)

Abstract

Unrelieved pain caused by cancer is experienced by more than 5 million people worldwide, and over the past 50 years has been accepted as unnecessary by both clinicians and politicians. Major innovations in the understanding of pain and our ability to treat it have been made. This Witness Seminar, chaired by Professor David Clark, describes the development of clinics, the introduction of the hospice in Britain, and global implementation of innovative technologies for cancer pain relief and advances in research during the latter part of the twentieth century, including the '3-step pain ladder' to pain relief. International health planners argue that the outstanding challenge is to put this knowledge into practice in healthcare settings around the world, often where resources are limited. An extract from an annotated Physiological Society interview with Patrick Wall in 1999 plus a note on the optimal potential for benefit of morphine by Professor Jan Stjernswärd appear as appendices. Participants include Professor Sir Michael Bond, Dr Suresh Kumar, Dr Colin, Murray Parkes, Dame Cicely Saunders, Professor Jan Stjernswärd, the late Dr Mark Swerdlow, Dr Robert Twycross and Professor Duncan Vere.