Cancer Palliative Care

Palliative care is specialized medical care for people with serious illness. This type of care is focused on providing relief from the symptoms and stress of a serious illness. The goal is to improve quality of life for both the patient and the family.Significant progress with palliative medicine continues to be made in India with the integration of palliative care in major cancer centres and the offering of fellowships in palliative medicine. Therefore, it is important to reinforce the continuing need for this alternative approach to cancer care in India and assess whether palliative care teams improve better quality of life outcomes. However, one of the barriers of ongoing palliative care development in India is the adopting of Western palliative care models, which are often irrelevant to the Indian setting. One aspect of Western palliative care that is particularly difficult to implement in the Indian context is the healthcare ethical standards by which palliative care centers are expected to uphold. Palliative care in India is believed to have been originated in Kerala in 1986 with the establishment of a pain clinic in the Regional Cancer Center of Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala. While there is the desire to imitate only Western models of palliation, the limitations in the Indian healthcare setting necessitate a future model of care adapted to the challenges of the Indian economy, government, and patient cohort. This book has been written to create awareness amongst the practioner sand post graduates regarding cancer palliative care. This book is planned as a practice manual in cancer palliative care.