Articles: analgesics.
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Klinische Wochenschrift · Jan 1990
Review[The interactions of vitamins B1, B6 and B12 with non-steroidal antirheumatic and analgesic drugs: animal experiment results].
B-vitamins are therapeutically used in combination with nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs and weak analgesics. The animal experiments dealing with the antinociceptive and antiinflammatory activity of such combinations are reviewed with reference to the significance of the single vitamins B1, B6, and B12, the possible mechanisms of action, and the relevance of the animal data to man.
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The lack of control of physical suffering among cancer patients in the last days or hours of life is a common medical problem but it is rarely discussed in an open fashion. We carried out a prospective study of the dying of 120 terminal cancer patients assisted by a home care team. We documented how long it was before death that physical symptoms, unendurable to the patient and controlled only by sedation-inducing sleep, appeared. ⋯ The most frequent symptoms were dyspnea in lung and head and neck disease; pain in breast, gastrointestinal tract, colon-rectum, and male genitourinary tract cancer; and vomiting in female genitourinary tract malignancies. Data reported emphasize the clinical relevance of physical symptoms in the last days of life in terminal cancer patients and how these serve to indicate imminent death. More than 50% of these patients die with physical suffering that is controllable only by means of sedation.