Introduction: Opioid rotation is a frecuent clinical practice. There are several studies that demonstrate its usefulness to control severe pain, neurotoxicity, etc. Nevertheless, there are some questions without solve: natural history of opioids, causes of the rotation and effectiveness of the measure. The publised data available from this knowledge is very scarcy.
Objective: 1. To describe the causes of opioid rotation or the administration route; 2. To measure the effectiveness of the switch;3 To know the natural history of the use of opioids.
Method: 1. Type of study: Multicentric, descriptive and longitudinal study.
2. Subjects to study: Advanced cancer patients from their first visit in a Palliative Care,Medical Oncology or radioOncology services, following until 6 months later. 3. Variables: Phone or consult register of switch of opioid considering: a) new event every rotation, including the change of administration route (oral, subcutaneous, transdermal, transoral, intravenous,...) b) causes of rotation: poor control of pain, toxicity, allergy, economic issues, patient wishes,.. c) effectiveness of the change: through a visual analogue scale noted the first, the third and the seventh days. d) Register of the time of the effective response until the new change.
Findings: We?ll show the preliminary results in this congress. We'll start this study in December-2003 and finish it in June-2004.
Conclusions: We’ll try to explain the causes of the opioid rotation and its effectiveness. Results could to show new improvement ways in the best use of opioids.