Background and perspectives of opioid analgesics for the treatment of chronic pain in cancer patients in Russia

: The article deals with an analysis of availability of narcotic analgesics for the patients in the Russian Federation. The analysis was based on datafrom official sources on the scopes of opioids delivery in different regions of the Russian Federation and showed an extremely limited availability of narcotic analgesics for the patients in the Russian Federation. We found that availability of narcotic analgesics in Russia is hundreds times lower than the same indexes in European countries with various level of economic activity and in the USA. The analysis showed ten most progressive Russian regions where the use of opioids in the noninvasive forms has become part of systematic clinical practice according to WHO recommendations as well as 10 ten most backward regions where these drugs are hardly used despite of high figures of case death rates from cancer. We made a list of most needed modern Russian and internationally produced drugs according to international data and personal experience. Drugs from this list can be effectually used for the chronic pain therapy in oncology. The most advanced drugs that are soon will be produced are also named. The article describes high priority measures that have already been done to improve current situation and measures to be executed in the future.