Received: December 05, 2022 Accepted: December 07, 2022 Published: December 07, 2022
Breast cancer is currently the most common cancer touching women. Fortunately, early detection and progress in breast cancer treatments has ameliorated its prognosis. However, new health problems like chronic pain have emerged. His main objective was to determine the prevalence and the characteristics of chronic pain among a population of Tunisian breast cancer survivors, that along with trying to prove the existence of associated factors to this pain and its clinical impact on patiens’ quality of life. This cross-sectional descriptive and analytic study was held on 100 Tunisian women treated for breast cancer in the medical oncology department of University Hospital in Monastir on an 8 months period of time. The instruments we used were a survey determining patients’ sociodemographic data, life habits, medical history, breast cancer characteristics and therapy related information, a questionnaire permitting pain description, PBI , PCS, DN4 and family Apgar score. Pain prevalence among our study population was 100% for more than 3 months and 53% had it from 2 to 5 years. The most common pain location was breast area followed by the upper limb area. Pain intensity was low as 62% of our patients had low intensity pain, pain interference was also mild on both affective and activity clusters. 27% of our patients were considered to have neuropathic pain according to the DN4. 88% belonged to highly functional families based on the family Apgar score.