Palliative care from diagnosis to death

Many people still associate palliative care with care in the terminal stage of cancer, and patients with cancer remain more likely to receive it than those with other illnesses.

It is often delayed until the last weeks or days of life once the illness is advanced and disease focused treatments are no longer effective. However, late palliative care is a missed opportunity to do better for patients, families, and health services.

Scott Murray, professor of primary palliative care at the university of Edinburgh, and colleagues set out a rationale for early palliative care based on the three typical trajectories of functional decline towards the end of life (rapid, intermittent, and gradual)