Abstract
The patient, a 66-year-old male with esophagus cancer, was operated on eight years ago, and the cancer was cured. But he had been suffering from thoracic pain because of the thoracotomy of esophagus cancer. So he was prescribed immediate-release morphine formulations, along the guidelines of cancer-pain treatment with rescue, even though his chronic pain was postoperative and unrelated to the cancer. As a result, he fell into opioid addiction. We report a process when abstinence from opioids was successful, and we advise consideration that a patient of noncancer chronic pain treated with opioids may fall into opioid addiction.
