Isabelle Mancini

TL;DR: Delirium precipitated by opioids and other psychoactive medications and dehydration is frequently reversible with change of opioid or dose reduction, discontinuation of unnecessary psychoactive medication, or hydration, respectively, and patients with delirium had poorer survival rates than controls.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors found that patients with delirium had poorer survival rates than controls (P.001) when compared to patients with nonreversibility, and psychoactive medications, predominantly opioids, were associated with reversibility.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors reviewed the pathophysiology and causes of constipation and the effects of opioids on the gastrointestinal tract, and proposed an approach for its assessment and management, including general interventions, such as the availability of comfort and privacy or the elimination of medical factors that may contribute to constipation, and therapeutic interventions including oral or rectal laxatives and the use of prokinetic drugs and naloxone.

TL;DR: Nonstandard, intensive treatment with i.v. ibandronate seems to have a marked analgesic effect in patients with opioid-resistant bone pain from metastatic bone disease, and improved QOL, patient functioning, and performance status.

TL;DR: Because BPs are providing supportive care, reducing the rate of skeletal morbidity but evidently not abolishing it, the criteria for stopping their administration have to be different from those used for classic antineoplastic drugs, and they should be stopped when metastatic bone disease is progressing.