Management of Cancer Patients with Opioid-Induced Constipation (OIC): The Experience of Three Italian Centres

Objectives: To present the Training on the field about OIC undertaken by three Italian oncological centres involving professionals of different sub-specialties. Methods: Four on-site interactive meetings of multidisciplinary hospital teams; interactive presentation and discussion, questionnaires administration at the baseline and at the end of the field programme over two years (2019-2021). Outcomes evaluated by estimated increase of OIC diagnosis and OIC treatments. Results: Shared principles about OIC prevention and management in all the steps (from laxatives to PAMORAs), and use of PROMs. Participants were asked about their initial awareness at the inception of the Training on the field programme and their final experiences at the end. Discussion: The experience of this Training on the field underlined the cardinal role of a constant teamwork in the Onco-ematology and Palliative Care Departments and the territory with a shared and tested algorithm. The proposed platform of activities is a call to action to mitigate the burden of pain and OIC if specialists act in concert during all the steps of the trajectory of cancer patients requiring opioid treatment. Multidisciplinary teamwork may help redefine and optimize doses and time schedules tailored to each patient and can contribute to designing controlled studies of OIC