BookBernd Alt-Epping, Friedemann Nauck, editors.
Summary: Palliative care provides comprehensive support for severely affected patients with any life-limiting or life-threatening diagnosis. To do this effectively, it requires a disease-specific approach as the patients? needs and clinical context will vary depending on the underlying diagnosis. Experts in the field of palliative care and oncology describe in detail the needs of patients with advanced cancer in comparison to those with non-cancer disease and also identify the requirements of patients with different cancer entities. Basic principles of symptom control are explained, with careful attention to therapy for pain associated with either the cancer or its treatment and to symptom-guided antineoplastic therapy. Complex therapeutic strategies for palliative cancer patients are highlighted that involve both cancer- and symptom-directed options and address a range of therapeutic aims. Issues relating to drug use in palliative cancer care are fully explored, and a separate section is devoted to care in the final phase. A range of organizational and policy issues are also discussed, and the book concludes by considering likely future developments in palliative care for cancer patients. Palliative Care in Oncology will be of particular interest to palliative care physicians who are interested in broadening the scope of their disease-specific knowledge, as well as to oncologists who wish to learn more about modern palliative care concepts relevant to their day-to-day work with cancer patients.
Contents:
1. Disease-specific oncology - disease-specific palliative care
2. Oncological and palliative care for patients with lung cancer and patients with breast cancer: two opposite ends of a spectrum
3. Palliative care for patients with haematological malignancies
4. Definition, pathophysiology, and assessment of pain
5. Therapy of cancer-related pain and cancer therapy-related pain
6. Radiation therapy in patients with non-curable cancer
7. Symptom management: the nursing view
8. The Liverpool Care pathway for the dying patient
9. The final phase
10. Options and problems of drug application in patients with advanced cancer
11. Drug interactions in palliative cancer care and oncology
12. Outpatient and inpatient structures: what does it need to integrate palliative care services?
13. Early palliative care
14. Psycho-oncology and palliative care: two concepts that fit into comprehensive cancer care
15. Cancer therapy in developing countries: the role of palliative care
16. Emergencies in oncology and crises in palliative care
17. Palliative care for patients participating in experimental or clinical oncology studies
18. The future of oncology palliative care.