Definition
“specialised medical care for people living with a serious illness, focussed on relieving the symptoms and stress of that illness”
Goal
- Improve quality of life for both patient and family/carers
- Anticipate and relieve suffering by addressing physical, informational, emotional, social and spiritual needs of patients and caregivers
Urological perspective:
- Most urological cancers have favourable prognoses – but patients with advanced or metastatic disease often have high symptom burden with difficult symptomatic management
RCTs involving palliative care have generally shown improved quality of life with symptom control, and no difference in overall survival