People with a serious or chronic illness often get lost in a healthcare system that seems focused on treating their illness and ignoring their symptoms. That’s where palliative care, an emerging branch of medicine, comes in.
Palliative care aims to improve the quality of life for patients with serious illnesses and their families through symptom prevention, treatment and relief. It’s provided by a team of specially trained doctors, nurses and other healthcare specialists who work alongside a patients’ other doctors. Rather than treating the illness per se, palliative care offers comfort, symptom management and a focus on respecting the patient’s medical care wishes.
Mandela’s Illness Puts The Spotlight on Palliative Care
This week, Dr. Richard Besser, chief health medical correspondent for ABC News, along with American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, hosted a Twitter chat on palliative care to help readers better understand what it is, where to find it and how to ask for it when needed. A full chat transcript can be found here. For highlights from the chat, including some of the best tweets from participating experts, read on.
Who needs palliative care?
Palliative care is appropriate for anyone who receives a diagnosis for a serious or chronic disease. Anyone with cancer, heart and lung disease, renal disease, and dementia is a likely candidate to receive palliative care, regardless of the stage of the disease.
Fortunately, palliative care has grown exponentially in the past few years. Nearly 65 percent of hospitals with more than 50 beds – over 1500 hospitals — now offer some form of palliative care, according to the Center to Advance Palliative Care, a non-profit group based in New York City.
However, the Center notes that only 24 percent of people said they were familiar with the term palliative care. If you are a loved one are diagnosed with a serious illness, ask your treating doctor if palliative care is available and request a palliative care consultation.
Jul 18, 2013 12:02pm
By Anita Rao, ABC News Medical Unit
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/07/18/palliative-care-helps-ease-the-pain-of-illness/
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