Introduction: Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer among women in developed countries and surgery is a necessary part of treatment. Severe acute postoperative pain is associated with prolonged hospitalization and increased medical care costs. Chronic pain may follow breast cancer surgery. Due to the frequency of chronic pain and its potential severity, it is receiving increasing research attention. Purpose: The purpose of the thesis is to present and study in more detail the pain of a patient after breast cancer surgery, to present and describe ways to relieve postoperative pain and to describe the role of nurses in such patients. Methods: We used various domestic and foreign databases to search for literature, such as Medline, CHINAL with full text and COBIB.SI, Google Scholar. We searched the literature with the help of the following keywords in Slovene and English: "breast cancer AND postoperative pain", "breast cancer AND chronic pain", "breast cancer AND nurse"; "Chronic pain relief AND nurse". For the literature included in the review, the following criteria were considered: available research that was published in full text, the language of the article, and the year of publication. In the final analysis, 19 members were included. The text was analyzed using the open coding method. Results: In the content analysis of the articles, 32 codes were identified. The codes were placed into the following three categories: Factors influencing the incidence of pain in patients after breast cancer surgery, Treatment of chronic pain in patients after breast cancer surgery, and Knowledge of nurses to manage chronic pain in patients after breast cancer surgery. Our work can be ranked among mediumstrength research work. Although most of the articles are at the sixth level, we also ranked some of them at the first and second level. Discussion and conclusion: Chronic pain after breast cancer surgery threatens the quality of life of patients. To effectively manage pain in breast cancer patients, nurses need to have the knowledge to detect and assess pain. Based on a review of the literature, we found that nurses would need additional knowledge to manage pain in patients after breast cancer surgery. Additional education is needed on chronic pain after breast cancer surgery. Improving communication between physicians and nurses plays a key role in managing chronic pain.
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