Pain ASsessment in CAncer Patients by Machine LEarning (PASCALE)

Recruiting now

Conditions studied: Oncology, Cancer Pain, Quality of Life

In brief

In cancer patients, the integration between anticancer therapies and palliative care is of fundamental importance. In this context, telemedicine can improve the quality of life (QoL) of chronic patients through self-management and remote monitoring solutions. This approach can favor the effectiveness of the treatment and therapeutic adherence. Of note, telemedicine can also be applied to the management of cancer pain. In the advanced stages of cancer disease, pain is one of the most obvious and most disabling symptoms. Consequently, proper pain management has a significant impact on the QoL, the ability to withstand treatment, and the recovery of patients. On the other hand, given the complexity of cancer pain, the main obstacle to its proper management is the lack of adequate measurement methods. Although in recent years a great deal of effort has been made in the direction of automatic pain assessment, both concerning the creation of datasets and the development of classification algorithms, the literature is lacking regarding the automatic measurement of pain in the setting of cancer patients. Observation by experienced clinical staff and self-assessment by patients could be useful for obtaining the ground truth and, in turn, for training automatic pain recognition systems.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT04726228

Run by

National Cancer Institute, Naples

People needed

40

Starts

2021-06-21

Expected to finish

2025-10-01

Last updated by the study team

2025-07-29

Who can join

Age: 18 and older. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: not accepted.

You may qualify if…

• Patients aged > 18 years
• Home care patients diagnosed with advanced cancer disease and life expectancy ≤ 1 year
• Patients receiving treatment for cancer pain
• Patients who have given their consent

You may not qualify if…

• Patients aged < 18 years
• Willingness to sign the informed consent form (unable to read or write)
• Cognitive deficit (e.g. Alzheimer disease or senile dementia)

Where it is running

• National Cancer Institute of Naples — Naples, Campania, Italy (enrolling)
• A.O.U. Federico II — Naples, Campania, Italy

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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