Palliative care is an essential part of cancer control
Palliative care is the active total care of the patient’s body, mind and spirit, and also involves giving support to the family. It begins when illness is diagnosed, and continues regardless of whether or not a patient receives treatment directed at the disease. Health providers must evaluate and alleviate a patient’s physical, psychological, and social distress.
Effective palliative care requires a broad multidisciplinary approach that includes the family and makes use of available community resources; it can be successfully implemented even if resources are limited. It can be provided in tertiary care facilities, in community health centers and even at a local center.
Improving the quality of life of patients and families.
Palliative care improves the quality of life of patients and families who face life-threatening illness, by providing pain and symptom relief, spiritual and psycho-social support to from diagnosis to the end of life and bereavement. Palliative care:
- Provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms
- Affirms life and regards dying as a normal process;
- Intends neither to hasten or postpone death;
- Integrates the psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care;
- Offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death;
- Offers a support system to help the family cope during the patients illness and in their own bereavement;
- Uses a team approach to address the needs of patients and their families, including bereavement counseling, if indicated;
- Will enhance quality of life, and may also positively influence the course of illness;
- Is applicable early in the course of illness, in conjunction with other therapies that are intended to prolong life, such as chemotherapy or radiation therapy, and includes those investigations needed to better understand and manage distressing clinical complications.
In most of the world, the majority of cancer patients are in advanced stages of cancer when first seen by a medical professional. For them, the only realistic treatment option is pain relief and palliative care. Effective approaches to palliative care are available to improve the quality of life for cancer patients.
Cancer winners are not just who have been cured of the disease. But the majority of cancer patients detected in India are in advanced stages. Their needs have to be addressed. Palliative care for such situations have to be properly understood. The aim is to make the patient comfortable during the end of life journey and at the same time leave fond memories with the caregivers.
No one is immortal.
(Reference – WHO Palliative care)
