Regional anesthesia for pain control in children with solid tumors—a review of case reports

Abstract

IntroductionAround seventy percent of all childhood cancer patients suffer from severe pain. This pain can arise from various sources, including tumors themselves, pain caused by metastasizing tumor cells or as the outcome of therapy meant to deal with tumors. If managed inadequately, such pain can lead to many hazardous sequelae. However, there are extreme cases when pain does not respond to standard treatment. For such cases, regional anesthesia or nerve blocks are utilized as the utmost pain control measure. Blocks are used to treat pain in patients who no longer respond to conventional opioid-based treatment or whose worsened condition makes it impossible to receive any other therapy. The data regarding the use of regional anesthesia for such cases in the children population is limited.MethodsFor this review we searched for case reports in Scopus and PubMed from inception to 2023. The descriptive search items included terms related to childhood cancer and the description of each block. The inclusion criteria for review include children (0-18 years old) receiving oncology-related surgical procedures or palliative care. The data collection was limited to solid tumor-related cases only. We analyzed a total of 38 studies that included case reports and one retrospective study.Results and discussionIt was concluded that nerve blocks, although rarely performed, are a safe and efficient way of pain control in children with solid tumors. The major settings for block performance are postoperative pain control and palliative care. We observed that block indication and its outcomes depend on unique health circumstances in which they should be performed. Patients with similar diagnoses had differing outcomes while receiving the same block treatment.