Palliative care addresses the symptoms of cancer throughout the course of the disease. Moreover, rather than just improving end-of-life care, palliative care also improves survival. It has long been established that a patient’s survival is dependent on the palliation of symptoms caused by cancer therapy, such as neutropenia and chemotherapy-induced nausea. However, the relief of other symptoms,...

Bone metastases are a common problem in patients with cancer and frequently result in significant pain and functional disability. An understanding of the pathogenesis of metastatic bone involvement and appropriate diagnostic evaluation often leads to earlier institution of palliative therapy. A substantial percentage of patients with bone metastases may benefit from palliative radiotherapy. Oft...

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide. Despite increases in the survival rate for various types of cancer over the past several decades, lung cancer remains an overwhelmingly lethal disease and the majority of patients succumb to the disease in a short period of time. A number of treatment options are available depending on the stage of lung cancer. The present review f...

Dedicated rapid access palliative radiation therapy improves patients' access to care, allowing more timely treatment which would positively impact on quality of life. The TomoTherapy (Accuray, Sunnyvale, CA) system provides megavoltage (MV) fan-beam computed tomography (FBCT) as the image guidance technique, and a module called "statRT" that allows the use of these MV FBCT images for direct pl...

BACKGROUND There are limited data on the outcomes of elderly patients with chronic kidney disease undergoing renal replacement therapy or conservative management. AIMS We aimed to compare survival, hospital admissions and palliative care access of patients aged over 70 years with chronic kidney disease stage 5 according to whether they chose renal replacement therapy or conservative managemen...

The European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) considers sedation to be an important and necessary therapy in the care of selected palliative care patients with otherwise refractory distress. Prudent application of this approach requires due caution and good clinical practice. Inattention to potential risks and problematic practices can lead to harmful and unethical practice which may unde...

We report a case of a 57-year-old male who presented with an inoperable chest wall sarcoma due to numerous pulmonary metastases and was treated with chemotherapy and radiation therapy. The patient subsequently developed refractory bleeding from the chest wall tumor requiring palliative chest wall resection and reconstruction. The patient made an uneventful recovery however died from metastatic ...