Palliative Morphine With or Without Concurrent Modafinil
Status:
Unknown status
Trial end date:
2013-08-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Oral morphine is often utilized as a convenient and effective method of achieving palliation
of pain in the terminally ill cancer patients. However, at effective doses, a majority of
patients do experience an undue amount of excessive sleepiness. Given the generally low
expected survival periods among this patient population, the fact that morphine causes the
patient to spend a significant period of remaining life in sleep, is often unacceptable for
the patients and their families. Given the proven benefits of modafinil in conditions
characterized by excessive sleepiness (such as with narcolepsy and shift-work disorder), the
investigators designed a prospective placebo controlled randomized trial by the addition of
modafinil at a dose of 200mg per day (in two divided doses) for eligible patients after
randomization.