[Pain management of cognitively impaired patients]

Abstract

Pain is a significant problem in clinical practice and its control is one of the most important challenging aspects as pain has a major impact on patients' quality of life and health care costs. Particularly vulnerable persons, like cognitively impaired patients are challenging for pain management and underline its increasing relevance.National and international studies showed significant differences concerning pain therapy between cognitively impaired and cognitively intact patients. A possible cause of this may be that patients who are cognitively impaired are only in a restricted way able to express their pain. Furthermore, knowledge gaps and reservations concerning the effect and dosage of analgesics among cognitively impaired patients could be identified on the involved professions.Further investigations in Germany are needed as deficient treatment remains a persistent problem and evidence-based data are missing. These investigations should describe the status quo of pain management for cognitively impaired patients and provide information which processes have to be adapted to the needs of these vulnerable patients.