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When should palliative care be integrated into cancer care?
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Palliative care should be integrated into cancer care during any cancer stage and in patients at any age.
Palliative care is commonly confused with end-of-life care, but it is initiated at the time of a cancer diagnosis to relieve suffering throughout the duration of the disease.
In a 2010 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that the early initiation of palliative care among patients with advanced lung cancer was not only associated with improvements in quality of life for patients, but that palliative care also decreased the need for aggressive care at the end of life and even increased survival in some cases.
Yet, according to a 2014 study published in Journal of Clinical Oncology, patients are not always referred to a palliative care team or they are referred late during the course of illness. According to the paper, feasible service delivery models are lacking in both the inpatient and outpatient setting.
By 2020, the United States aims to include palliative care as a routine part of comprehensive care for all patients with cancer.
Additional information may be found at these websites:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Palliative+care+lung+cancer+aggressive+N+Engl+J+Med
http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/early/2014/09/03/JCO.2013.54.8149.abstract
http://www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials/results/summary/2010/early-palliative-care0910