Indications
Patients at all stages of treatment need some kind of palliative care to comfort them. In some cases, medical specialty professional organizations recommend that patients and physicians respond to an illness only with palliative care and not with a therapy directed at the disease. The following items are indications named by the American Society of Clinical Oncology as characteristics of a patient who should receive palliative care but not any cancer-directed therapy.
- patient has low performance status, corresponding with limited ability to care for oneself
- patient received no benefit from prior evidence-based treatments
- patient is ineligible to participate in any appropriate clinical trial
- the physician sees no strong evidence that treatment would be effective
These characteristics may be generally applicable to other disease conditions besides cancer.
Read more about this topic: Palliative Care
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