Journal of pain and symptom management
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J Pain Symptom Manage · May 2012
Multicenter StudyEpisodic (breakthrough) pain prevalence in a population of cancer pain patients. Comparison of clinical diagnoses with the QUDEI--Italian questionnaire for intense episodic pain.
Breakthrough/episodic pain (BP-EP) diagnosis is often based on clinical experience, and different opinions exist, even among palliative care clinicians, about its definition and application to clinical practice. ⋯ Because BP-EP is a significant phenomenon in cancer pain management, its appropriate recognition requires a more widely, internationally accepted general definition and specific validated tools for its screening and evaluation.