Palliative Care Description and Examples (Essay Sample)

Introduction
Palliative care is an interdisciplinary and broad approach in the management of patients diagnosed with terminal and incurable diseases and their families (Billings 1998). Though applicable to any disease, palliative care is mostly utilized in the management of terminally ill cancer patients. While earlier palliative care was limited only to terminally ill patients, it today has become an essential part of cancer management, especially dealing with the morbidities associated with treatment regimens. The major aspects of palliative care in cancer include, pain management, management of other debilitating symptoms, psychological and moral support to the patient and family, sustenance of vital needs (such as food and drinks) even at the face of imminent death.
Each year about 1.7 million new patients in US visit clinic for the treatment and management of cancer and 60% of them experience an intense pain during the therapy and afterwards (Cancer.org 2015). Cancer is a malignant disease and when it spreads to various parts of the body, a patient exhibits varying degree of a range of symptoms depending upon the organ of metastasis. Hence, for example a lung cancer patient may have paroxysms of cough and an inability to speak due to an associated laryngitis, an advanced colorectal cancer patient may have bowel symptoms, where as a patient with infected joints may have difficult gait or postural difficulties. These and the other experiences pose a serious mental pressure on the surviving patient. Add to this a constant threat of approaching death, and mounting hospital bills.
Palliative care thus is a very wide area and hence, expertise along with a caring attitude is warranted. With the advances in basic and translational research, mortality rates are decreasing and more and more cancer patients are now survivors (National Cancer Institute 2015). Research on various palliation methods is currently active around the world. In the current write up two researchesin this relevance is discussed:
Example 1: A study on the barriers to cancer pain management
A major aspect affecting the cancer treatment is the financial burden on the patient and family for the curative as well therapeutic options. In many of the developing nations, the burden becomes double sided, that the patient and the family not only would have to undergo difficulties in the form of lack of advanced therapies available, but also the lack of palliative measures such as availability of pain relieving agents. In the study by LeBaron and group (LeBaron et al. 2014), they evaluated the barriers in access to opioid pain killer in a developing country, India. The study, performed from a sample size of 54 cancer patients, identified that social and infrastructural challenges are the key barriers in pain management. The study recommended revisions in the policy regarding the availability of opioid drugs, especially morphine, in the cancer pain management in India.
Example 2: Palliative treatment of colorectal cancer patients; self-expanding metallic stents.
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the top most common cancers in the World, with approximately a million incidences per year (Fearon 2011). Up to 1/3rd of the patients with CRC also develop obstructions in large intestine. While surgical removal of the entire large intestine is a common mode of treatment, many of the patients also would have to undergo palliative treatment, to remove the obstruction in the intestinal tract till such surgeries are performed. In the research conducted in 2012 by a group of medical researchers, an evaluation was done when they used self-expanding metallic tubes (SEMS) in aiding the bowel movement until surgery. Obstruction of the bowel by a tumor would not only make difficulties for the patient, but also would create problem in diagnostic measures like colonoscopy. SEMS is a means to drain the obstruction, and to further allow bowel ...