Safety and Effectiveness of Transdermal Buprenorphine in Cancer Pain

Buprenorphine transdermal patch is newly available in Taiwan in June 2017, the trade name is Transtec, and the available dosages are 35 μg/h and 52.5 μg/h. Taiwan is the first Asia country which launched Transtec for cancer pain treatment. Although the efficacy of transdermal buprenorphine has been demonstrated in some randomized, placebo-controlled studies and also conducted a large scale post-marketing surveillance study in Germany, therefore the local scientific data is required for Asia experience. Due to above rationale, this observational study will be initiated in Taiwan, to build up the first real-world scientific data in Asia. The objective of this study is to collect the safety and effectiveness of transdermal buprenorphine in routine clinical practice, in particular, to collect data in population with controlled cancer pain and stable titration from previous opioid analgesics in Taiwan.