Gender Differences Associated with Pain Characteristics and Treatment in Taiwanese Oncology Outpatients

Abstract

The purpose of this descriptive and comparative study was to examine gender differences relevant to painintensity, opioid prescription patterns and opioid consumption in Taiwanese oncology outpatients. The 92participants had been prescribed opioid analgesics for cancer-related pain at least once in the past week andwere asked to complete the Brief Pain Inventory – Chinese questionnaire and to recall the dosage of each opioidanalgesic that they had ingested within the previous 24 hours. For opioid prescriptions and consumption, allanalgesics were converted to morphine equivalents. The results revealed a significant difference between malesand female minimum pain thresholds (t = 2.38, p = 0.02) and current pain thresholds (t = 2.12, p = 0.04), withmales reporting a higher intensity of pain than females. In addition, this study found that males tended to useprescribed opioid analgesics more frequently than females on the bases of both around the clock (ATC) (t = 1.90,p = 0.06) and ATC plus as needed (ATC + PRN) (t = 2.33, p = 0.02). However, there was no difference betweenmales and females in opioid prescriptions on an ATC basis (t = 0.52, p = 0.60) or at an ATC + PRN basis (t =0.40, p = 0.69). The results suggest that there may be a gender bias in the treatment of cancer pain, supportingthe proposal of routine examination of the effect of gender on cancer pain management. These findings suggestthat clinicians should be particularly aware of potential gender differences during pain monitoring and theconsumption of prescribed opioid analgesics.