Frequency and Presentations of Chronic Pain Following Breast Cancer Surgery: An Observational Study in a Tertiary Care Hospital of Pakistan

After approval from the Departmental Research Committee and Institutional Ethical Review Committee all adult female patients with known carcinoma of breast who are scheduled for elective definitive breast cancer surgery (Mastectomy) from 1st July 2016 to 30th December 2016 will be enrolled in this audit. Inclusion of patients will be done once operative procedure is finalized and consent taken in breast clinic. Those patients who did not give consent and those patients who need reoperation on same side for recurrence of cancer or any reason will be excluded from this study.

Data will be obtained from patient's medical record, interview of patient on follow up visit at breast clinic and telephonic communication with patient. Variables have been defined and a special form has been designed for data collection. All patients will be followed for next three months and those who have persistent pain will be followed for six months after operation.

Follow up information will be obtained from patient visiting breast clinic. For any missing data patient's medical records will be reviewed and patient will be contacted to know if they have chronic post-surgical pain or not. Audit forms will be filled by authors according to their availability. The primary investigator or author at breast clinic will keep all forms for safe record keeping which shall later be used for data analysis.