The Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Center in New York City has been a leader in pain research and treatments linked to cancer. The center’s Doctor Kathleen Foley has been responsible for part of that gain. In the nineteen seventies, a supervisor asked her if she would like to do clinical research about pain. She was completing her medical education at the center at the time.
STEVE EMBER: Doctor Foley wanted to do the research. But she said she did not know anything about the subject. The head of the center’s office dealing with the nervous system said nobody else knew about it, either.
As part of her duties, Kathleen Foley studied treatment of patients dying of cancer in the hospital. She found that the treatment was far from satisfactory. She said patients were often not given medicine to control pain until they were suffering badly. And, their pain could be eased only by injection.
Doctor Foley brought together experts in medicine, drug treatment and basic research to find better methods. A laboratory was created to study recently discovered opiate receptors in the brain.
BOB DOUGHTY: Research published mainly in nineteen seventy-three had found proteins on the surfaces of nerve cells in the brain. The findings made it possible to better study pain drugs and learn how they affect the body.
Today many doctors order pain medicines for dying patients to be given before suffering takes hold. And more methods of administering the medicines are now available. One is a pump that lets patients give themselves pain medications as needed. They cannot harm themselves because the amount of painkiller in the pump is carefully measured and limited.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25