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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Indian J Med Paediatr Oncol 2020; 41(02): 215-217
DOI: 10.4103/ijmpo.ijmpo_27_20
Trainee’s Corner

Palliative Care in Oncology

Sharada Mailankody
Department of Medical Oncology, Manipal Comprehensive Cancer Care Centre, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, Karnataka, India
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The word palliative is derived from the Latin word ”pallium” meaning cloak. Palliative care is the active complete care of patients with life-limiting illnesses (not only cancer) and their families when the disease is not amenable to curative treatments. “Cloaking” or palliating a patient would involve tackling the psychological, social, and spiritual aspects of the disease and its treatment apart from the conventional care for physical symptom relief. Palliative care is a patient-centered approach that emphasizes relief from pain and distress by systematic identification and assessment of problems faced by the patient [Figure 1].[1]

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Figure 1: Overview of palliative care. An integrated approach with the management of total pain – physical, emotional, spiritual, and social components[2]

In India, since 2012, we have had the National Program for Palliative Care, under the National Health Mission. There are also various initiatives by the government and the nongovernment organizations to tackle the increasing demand for palliative care services in the community. The community-based palliative care service in Kerala (Neighborhood Network in Palliative Care) is a model for resource-poor settings, where the people in the community are trained for providing basic palliative care services to the neighborhood patients. However, typically palliative care for cancer patients is delivered by multidisciplinary teams including clinical oncologists, palliative care physicians, physiotherapists, psychiatrists, dietitians, and palliative care nurses.[2]

In oncology, palliative care is extremely important at all stages of cancer care, as elaborated below [Figure 2].

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Figure 2: Role of palliative care team throughout cancer treatment[2]

  • At diagnosisb

  • During treatment

  • End-of-life care (EOLC)



Publication History

Received: 27 January 2020

Accepted: 09 April 2020

Article published online:
23 May 2021

© 2020. Indian Society of Medical and Paediatric Oncology. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial-License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.)

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