Intravenous analgesia with ultra-high-dose morphine for the treatment of headache and successful withdrawal of morphine: A case report and literature review

RATIONALE: Pain is the fifth vital sign of human beings. Morphine is the first choice for relieving moderate to severe cancer pain. Most of the previous studies merely focused on the analgesic effect of high-dose or ultra-high-dose morphine in patients with advanced cancers but did not report any cases related to successful morphine withdrawal. PATIENT CONCERNS: A 42-year-old woman was admitted to our hospital in March 2019. DIAGNOSIS: She was diagnosed with progressive aggravation of headache for 1 month, which was meningeal metastasis of lung cancer. INTERVENTIONS: Symptomatic treatments like dehydration, hormone, intrathecal injection chemotherapy and an increased dose of osimertinib to 160 mg/day were applied but showed poor curative effects. The patient refused whole-brain radiotherapy. Pain intensity level was re-evaluated and the patient scored 9 based on numerical rating scale, which suggested that the patient suffered from severer cancerous pain. Thus, the patient started to receive morphine for treating headache. OUTCOMES: The patient's headache was alleviated after receiving high-dose morphine treatment, and she continued to undergo anti-cancer treatment. After tumor remission, the patient's morphine dose gradually decreased and eventually stopped, without any withdrawal symptoms. In addition, the quality of life of the patient was greatly improved with performance status scored 2 and limb muscle strength increased from Grade 2 to Grade 5. LESSONS: For patients with advanced cancers, the application of ultra-high-dose morphine may significantly relieve cancerous pain, improve survival and quality of life, and overcome their fear for death and desperation, which contributes to the establishment of a basis for subsequent anticancer treatments. Thus, timely effective pain management and routine anticancer treatments are the key to addressing the cancer pain problem.