What to do if patients with advanced liver cancer experience pain

Pain in the liver area is a symptom that runs through the entire course of liver cancer patients. In the early stages of liver cancer patients, the pain symptoms are mild. As the disease progresses, in the late stages, liver cancer patients often experience continuous bloating or dull pain.

So will patients with advanced liver cancer feel very painful? In fact, only some patients will experience particularly obvious pain. Generally speaking, the presence and degree of pain mainly depends on the size of the tumor and the affected area. Patients with larger tumors will experience more obvious pain, and tumors located at the edge of the liver will also experience more obvious pain.

If the tumor metastasizes to the abdominal lymph nodes, it will compress the abdominal plexus and cause severe back pain, and the pain is often persistent; if the tumor metastasizes to the bones, the pain in the corresponding area will also be obvious.

If patients with advanced liver cancer experience pain, they should first take adequate pain relief. Usually, under the guidance of a doctor, non-steroidal analgesics such as indomethacin suppositories and anal plugs should be selected, combined with opioid receptor drugs for pain relief, such as morphine controlled-release tablets. Of course, liver cancer patients need to use pain relief drugs under the guidance of a doctor.

For the pain of late-stage liver cancer, we should change the past concept of not daring to use analgesics due to concerns about adverse reactions, which makes patients endure the pain. In the late stage of liver cancer, treatment should focus on improving the patient's quality of life and alleviating pain. Therefore, relieving the patient's pain is very important.