Cancer symptom control trials: how may we advance this field?

Richard J. Ablin, PhD, Research Professor of Immunobiology, University of Arizona College of Medicine and the Arizona Cancer Center, Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A., and Phil Gold, PhD MD, Professor of Medicine, Physiology, and Oncology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Section Editors. Canadian Institutes of Health: Research definition of palliative care: Palliative care aims to improve the life of patients and families through the early identification and impeccable management of suffering associated with advanced illness and emphasis on the positive aspects of life inclusive of physical, psychosocial and spiritual sources. Palliative care is an exercise in prevention—prevention of suffering through prioritizing the diagnosis and skillful care of sources of distress throughout the course of illness and for the family into the bereavement period. It is not simply an end of life concept separate from other aspects of research and control. Palliative care research focuses on fundamental symptom mechanisms as well as the experience of the patient and the family. —Adapted, with thanks, from the World Health Organization