A new report finds about one in three cancer survivors (34.6%) reported having chronic pain, representing nearly 5.4 million cancer survivors in the U.S. The report, appearing as a Research Letter in JAMA Oncology, finds one in six survivors (16%), representing about 2.5 million people in the U.S., reported suffering from high impact chronic pain that restricts daily functioning. Those rates are about double the rates in the general population.
How’s this for a paradox: The better cancer centers become at keeping patients alive, the more expensive cancer care becomes. This brutal tradeoff hits harder in rural areas, where the cancer burden is higher and the investigator and clinical trial representation is lower.
