Pain and Palliative Care Terms

A drug used to relieve certain side effects caused by treatment with opiods (pain killers similar to morphine), such as constipation (hard, dry stools), itching, and low urine flow.

A deliberately modest word: it promises less of a problem, never none of it, which is why precision about the amount matters.

Music therapy is a credentialed clinical practice using structured musical activities, guided by a trained therapist, to address physical, emotional, or cognitive treatment goals.

Whether the ache sits in one muscle or everywhere at once is the first question, because the two lists of causes barely overlap.

Blocking rather than replacing sets it apart from methadone and buprenorphine, and it is why timing after withdrawal matters so much.

The legal meaning and the medical one no longer match, and some drug laws classify cocaine as a narcotic though it is not an opioid.

A procedure in which medicine is injected directly into or around a nerve or into the spine to block pain.

A drug that decreases fever, swelling, pain, and redness.

The same enzyme block that relieves pain also strips prostaglandin protection from the stomach lining and from blood flow through the kidney.

A substance that relieves pain and is being studied in the treatment of some types of cancer.

An opiate is a pain-relieving substance derived directly from opium, a narrower category than the broader term opioid, which also includes synthetic drugs.

These drugs do not remove the source of pain; they change how the nervous system registers it, and the other effects follow from that.

Oxycodone hydrochloride is the salt form of oxycodone, an opioid pain reliever prescribed for moderate to severe pain.

The point at which a person becomes aware of pain.

The commonest misconception is that it signals giving up, when it can begin on the day of diagnosis.

Treatment given to relieve the symptoms and reduce the suffering caused by cancer and other life-threatening diseases.

A condition marked by pain, swelling, numbness, tingling, or redness of the hands or feet.

Small doses taken at the moment they are wanted track pain better than larger ones handed out on a fixed clock.

An oral drug for long-term bladder pain, thought to patch the protective coating that keeps urine off the bladder wall.

A nerve problem that causes pain, numbness, tingling, swelling, or muscle weakness in different parts of the body.