What Is Palliative Care – Supportive Treatment? Why Is It Important in Cancer?

What Is Palliative Care?

Palliative care aims to improve quality of life for people with serious and/or progressive disease and their relatives throughout the illness, beginning at diagnosis.

More explicitly: Serious illnesses such as cancer and their treatment have many effects reducing comfort: pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, edema, urinary and kidney problems, fatigue and psychological difficulties. Palliative care provides the approach needed to maintain daily activities and perhaps employment, or at least minimize suffering throughout illness.

In Turkish healthcare literature, it is called palliative care or supportive treatment , corresponding internationally to palliative care . Dictionary meanings of “palliative” include relieving, temporary, temporary remedy, soothing . Cancer and other serious diseases affect patients and relatives physically and psychologically. Removing or easing these effects is essential. Palliative care is multifaceted and covers the entire illness.

Its multifaceted nature is its most important feature, starting at diagnosis. Such comprehensive, ongoing care necessarily requires teamwork. Medical oncologists always need a palliative team, potentially including specialist doctors or nurses, dietitians, psychologists, art and sports coordinators and spiritual caregivers.

Classifying cancer treatment by aim gives: curative treatments (providing cure, improving the disease itself) and supportive treatments as the categories. Curative methods include chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery. Supportive treatmentsaddress physical and psychological symptoms and spiritual and social problems. They are needed at every stage. With very advanced disease at diagnosis, current literature may support supportive care alone without curative treatment. Though difficult to hear, curative treatments have been shown unsuccessful and to cause earlier deaths in very advanced illness. Even without tumor-directed treatment, palliative care is central to coping, and team-delivered support improves both survival and quality of life. Therefore, whether or not cancer is completely treated, palliative care is an inevitable part of the illness process.

Palliative Care Centers in Türkiye

Cancer centers and hospitals can provide care, with teams assessing needs as often as required. In practice, these conditions are not always available in our country. Türkiye has few specialized cancer centers, while palliative care is developing. Ministry of Health initiatives include training courses and increasing hospital centers. According to April 2018 Ministry data, services were delivered in 79 provinces with 3899 beds across 297 facilities. Appropriate communication also allows home care.

What Does Palliative Care Focus On, and How?

It focuses on problems arising during illness.

These Fall into Three Groups:

• Physical Problems: most commonly pain, fatigue, appetite loss, nausea, vomiting, shortness of breathand insomnia.
• Emotional Problems and Acceptance: depression, anxietyand fears.
• Practical Problems: Patients and relatives may worry about finances, legal issues and health insurance.

Illness is never only the patient’s problem; relatives share it. Palliative care’s inclusive philosophy addresses relatives’ difficulties too.

Supporting the patient and family from the beginning and continuing through bereavement after death, palliative care is a specialized, advanced healthcare philosophy. We hope this discipline reaches developed-country standards in our country... 

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- Recommendations for Cancer Patients and Relatives in Waiting Rooms

- 6 Recommendations for Relatives Caring for Cancer Patients

- The Importance of Early Palliative Care (Supportive Treatment) in Stage 4 Cancer and Its Finer Points