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Study shows the quality-of-life with cancer care Palliative care, which helps the gravely ill make the most of the time they have left, provided a surprising bonus for terminal lung cancer patients: More time left to enjoy. The study involved 151 people newly diagnosed with cancer that had spread beyond the lung. All received routine cancer care and about half also got palliative care. The study found that patients who started soon after their diagnosis on palliative care along with usual cancer care lived nearly three months longer than people given only standard cancer care, even though this second group had more chemotherapy. It really means "helping people live as well as they can, as long as they can," said Dr. Vicki Jackson, acting chief of palliative care at Massachusetts General. That's a big difference. Patients like this typically live less than a year after diagnosis, said study leader Dr. Jennifer Temel, a cancer specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where the study was done. Palliative care involves doctors, nurses, social workers, nutritionists and even chaplains who specialize in pain control and treating nausea, shortness of breath and other symptoms that affect quality of life. It's not the same as hospice or comfort care, when doctors think a patient has less than six months to live and treating the illness no longer helps. One of the most common misconceptions about palliative care is that it indicates treatment has failed, that it means giving up,Not true. Quality of life and physical functioning improved in the palliative care group and worsened in the others. Depression was less than half as common in the palliative care group. When people feel better, they're much more likely to go for their treatment, to get up out of bed, to exercise," and that affects survival, said Dr. R. Sean Morrison, president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine and a doctor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. The study shows that palliative care should be a routine part of managing any serious illness rather than "what we do when there is nothing more that we can do," Drs. Amy Kelley and Diane Meier of Mount Sinai wrote in an editorial in the journal. The American Society of Clinical Oncology and two cancer charities paid for the study. It did not look at the cost of palliative care, which is mostly doctor visits. However, research Morrison has published suggests it can save money by lowering emergency visits, unwanted hospital stays and futile treatments. Douglas Fanning. please look at link, and thanks for reading my articles on Palliative Care,Cancer Https://www.medicare-health.cz.cc
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