Meeting the challenges in cancer pain management.

Improved life expectancy among patients with cancer has unfortunately resulted in significant increases in the number of patients experiencing chronic, intractable pain-neuropathic pain syndromes, in particular. Yet treatment for this pain is frequently suboptimal. This is due, at least partially, to the generalized nature of available therapeutics, which are often aimed toward symptom management and temporal pain properties rather than targeted directly toward the multiple mechanisms underlying the generation and propagation of pain.