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What Is Palliative Care in Cancer and When Is It Started?
By Raveena M Prakash
Cancer is an emotionally daunting diagnosis that can cause different challenges to both patients and their families. Undergoing timely and effective treatments like chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation therapy will help to improve cancer. While palliative care offers a form of care and comfort that addresses not just the disease but also lowers the emotional and psychological impacts on the patients' lives.
In this blog, we’ll explore more about what palliative care is, when it starts in cancer treatments, how it is used in early- and advanced-stage patients, and its benefits.
What is palliative care?
Palliative care is a specialized approach used in cancer care that offers comfort and care for advanced-stage patients, while it offers essential treatments for early-stage patients. This holistic approach helps to improve the quality of life of cancer patients. This is not quite similar to any other curative treatments used in cancer. This aims to reduce the symptoms of cancer and helps to heal the pain and stress associated with many treatments and their side effects.
One of the major goals is to cure cancer symptoms, while many healthcare practitioners make sure that the patient would feel as comfortable as possible, regardless of their stage. Their team involves a group of experienced oncologists, nurses, social workers, and other specialists working together to provide emotional and medical support to the patient and their family.
The medical teams can help with:
- Pain management: The team helps to reduce the pain level in the patients, caused by cancer and treatments like surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or radiation therapy.
- Symptom management: One of the major goals is to manage the side effects like nausea, vomiting, fatigue and loss of appetite, or difficulty breathing.
- Emotional support: The team also addresses the mental and emotional challenges of the patients and their loved ones.
- Decision making support: It helps cancer patients and their families to confirm the decisions about treatment options, including whether to continue any type of aggressive treatment or shift focus to comfort and care. It also helps to make decisions about extending the overall life expectancy of the patient.
When does palliative care start in a cancer patient?
The significant factor of palliative care is that it can be introduced at any stage of cancer. One of the misunderstood parts of this team is that it can only be used in the last stage of cancer. Meanwhile, the care and comfort is not limited only to terminal-stage cancer patients.
This treatment approach can be started right from the time of diagnosis and continued through different stages of treatment, including curative, recurrence, remission, and advanced diseases.
Early stage cancer patients
People diagnosed with cancer recently, especially an early-stage cancer, may not need a palliative care team in the first place. Most cancer patients still experience significant discomfort and distress due to the symptoms or the side effects of treatments. In such scenarios, specialized comfort and care from specialists can often play a major role in ensuring the patient’s quality of life remains as high as possible.
It helps you to manage the side effects of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or surgery. The benefits of a care team in the early-stage patients also support the families, as they help to decide the emotional and psychological impact of a cancer diagnosis.
Advanced stage cancer
For patients diagnosed with an advanced stage of cancer, that’s when palliative care’s role gets significant. At this stage, cancer can’t be cured, and the focus often shifts to comfort and symptom management in advanced-stage patients.
This helps to make sure that the patient feels comfortable and experiences fewer health challenges. Additionally, the team offers guidance in decision-making, like whether to pursue any further treatments or prioritize the quality of life.
Benefits of palliative care in Cancer patients
Including a specialised care team in your cancer treatments in an early stage often offers several benefits to the patients.
These may include:
- Better symptom management: Getting an early medical intervention can often help to manage the symptoms more effectively, from the start of the treatment.
- Improves the overall quality of life: The team helps to reduce the physical, emotional, and psychological challenges of the patients by offering comfort and care.
- Offers genuine support and care to the patients: Families of patients often feel stressed when a loved one is diagnosed with cancer. The care teams offer resources and guidance that help to deal with the symptoms.
- Helps to take informed decisions regarding cancer: Patients usually stressed about their treatments, making the right decisions that aligns with your treatment outcomes and its chance of success.
Consult Today
Palliative care is an essential part of cancer treatments, especially in advanced-stage or last-stage cancer patients. It offers patients relief from several cancer symptoms, provides emotional support, and often focuses on improving the quality of life.
At Oncare, we offer premium quality cancer treatments, including advanced cancer surgeries, at affordable price ranges with an experienced cancer specialist consultation.
If you or any loved ones of yours are diagnosed with cancer, then visit Oncare Cancer Center and book an appointment with our cancer specialist. Get an estimated cost of cancer treatments.
Frequently Asked Questions
Palliative care or treatments may include non-drug and drug treatments.
For example: if you are an advanced stage cancer patient, to manage your pain or breathlessness without drugs. Your doctor or nurse may suggest these.
- Helps to positioning you in a particular position
- They helps to use relaxation techniques
- They instruct you to use breathing techniques
- Offer helps to manage your anxiety levels
Some technicians often use therapies to help relieve:
- The symptoms of cancer
- Side effects of treatments
The cancer specialist may use these drugs in palliative care, including:
- Different types of painkillers for a cancer symptoms
- Laxative drugs for constipation
- Steroids for loss of appetite, swallowing issues, swelling in the brain seizures
- Some drugs to reduce bowel issues
- Anti sickness drugs used for sickness and vomiting
- Using muscle relaxants for pain, anxiety or sleeping issues
- Some drugs to use antipsychotic medications for sleeping disorders
- Some drugs to used to relieve breathlessness
- Drugs to stop bleeding in patients
- Antibiotics and antifungal drugs to treat bacterial and fungal infections
- Drugs to relieve skin itching
These are some of the major treatments used for cancer disease.
- Chemotherapy
- Radiotherapy
- Hormone therapy
- Targeted therapy
- Immunotherapy
- Surgery
- Radiofrequency ablation
- cryotherapy
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