Compressive Palliative and supportive care

      Is an important part of cancer care. Sometimes called supportive care, it is recommended for all cancer patients from the time of diagnosis, through all stages of treatment, and after treatment is complete to address symptoms of the disease itself or side effects of its treatment.

     The World Health Organization (WHO) defines palliative care as an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with a life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial, and spiritual.

              Hospice care is intended specifically for the end-of-life period, generally for patients expected to live for less than six months. Palliative care is recommended for patients at any stage of a life-threatening or chronic illness. The intent is not to treat or cure your disease, but to ease any symptoms and side effects you are experiencing while preparing for, undergoing, and recovering from treatment as well as once treatment is over.

    In addition to managing physical needs, palliative care also includes other sources of support to meet your emotional, spiritual, practical, and social needs, and to help you and your family plan for the future. You and your care team will determine which treatments and services are right for you based on your symptoms and other individual needs.

     Physical medicine and rehabilitation, anesthesiology, psychology, social work, radiology, and pain medicine are just some of the specialties that can provide palliative care t patients.

    What is a palliative care plan?

               A comprehensive palliative care plan should consider:

• Pain management, including careful assessment of the cause of your pain. For instance, it is important to determine whether the pain is the result of your original tumor, new tumor growth, or past treatments. 

•    Questions to ask your doctors

     To help you get the best care possible, we developed lists of questions with the input of patients and caregivers that can help you think about what you want to ask your doctors, including questions about palliative care.

•             Among these, carcinomas are the most diagnosed type. These cancers originate in organs or glands such as lungs, stomach, pancreas, breast, etc. Leukemia is the cancer of the blood, and this does not form any tumors. Sarcomas start in the muscles, bones, tissues or other connective tissues of the body. Lymphomas are the cancer of the white blood cells, i.e. the lymphocytes. And finally, melanoma is when cancer arises in the pigment of the skin.

•      Causes of Cancer

          In most cases, we can never attribute the cause of any cancer to one single factor. The main thing that causes cancer is a substance we know as carcinogens. But how these develop or enters a person’s body will depend on many factors. We can divide the main factors into the following types – biological factors, physical factors, and lifestyle-related factors.

•          Treatment of Cancer

            Early diagnosis and immediate medical care in cancer are of utmost importance. When diagnosed in the early stages, then the treatment becomes easier and has more chances of success. The three most common treatment plans are either surgery, radiation therapy or chemotherapy.

•            If there is a benign tumor, then surgery is performed to remove the mass from the body, hence removing cancer from the body. In radiation therapy, we use radiation (rays) to specially target and kill the cancer cells. Chemotherapy is similar, where we inject the patient with drugs that target and kill the cancer cells. All treatment plan
•         As we know, cancer can actually affect any part or organ of the human body. We all have come across various types of cancer – lung, blood, pancreas, stomach, skin, and so many others. Biologically, however, cancer can be divided into five types specifically – carcinoma, sarcoma, melanoma, lymphoma, leukemia.