PCA met individual patient's opioid needs in a safe and effective manner despite a large inter-individual variability in opioid consumption. Moreover, the study indicated a pattern of less opioid requirement at night.

PCA seems to be an ideal, dependable and feasible mode of analgesic administration for the individual titration of dose in children with chemotherapy-induced mucositis. This is expressed through the increase in daily self-administered opioid doses after starting PCA, the huge interindividual variability in opioid consumption and the rare event of an un-delivered bolus request during lock-out time. With the use of a background infusion, additional bolus requests are rare during the night.