Few studies have been done on the use of opioids or psychotropic drugs by cancer patients in Japan. In view of this, we investigated patient records for a total of 2,044 patients, brought by themselves to our pharmacy between September 2009 and March 2010. Their median age was 67 (range 16-93) yrs, and there were 1,402 males (68.5%). The median number of prescriptions they brought with them was 4 (range: 0-23, median number of maintenance drugs = 3, median number of temporary acute therapy drugs = 0). One hundred and eighty seven patients (9.1%) had narcotic analgesic drugs other than codeine phosphate hydrate, and their median morphine-equivalent daily dose was 25mg (range 3.8-265). Six hundred and thirty four patients (31.0%) had psychotropic drugs. Among these drugs, hypnotics accounted for 17.6% (359/2044), anxiolytics 11.0% (224/2044), antipsychotics 7.4% (151/2044), antiepileptics 3.0% (61/2044), and antidepressants 2.3% (47/2044).
Our survey revealed that approximately 10% of cancer patients brought in narcotic analgesic drugs and approximately 30% of them had several psychotropics to be used as supportive medication in cancer treatment.