Pain is prevalent among patients with gastrointestinal cancers. There is abundant evidence that coeliac plexus neurolysis (CPN) is effective in reducing pain, opioid requirement and related side effects for pancreatic cancer cases while the evidence for other upper abdominal cancer pain is less robust but emerging. Meanwhile, there is an increasing interest in utilising splanchnic nerve neurolysis (SNN) as an alternative to CPN for cancer pain relief.
Although previous studies investigating the role of CPN/SNN involved heterogenous types of intra-abdominal malignancies, majority of cases were pancreatic cancer. Therefore, their efficacy on non-pancreatic abdominal cancer pain may not be accurately determined.
