Palliative care provides support and care for many people with cancer. More often nowadays, people living with other diseases are being offered palliative care services. This may include people who have:
- Alzheimer’s' disease
- AIDS
- Motor Neurone Disease and multiple sclerosis
- Advanced lung, heart, kidney and liver disease
- Disabling stroke and other neurological diseases
- Dementia.
Many of the symptoms that cancer patients have are experienced by people with other diseases. Palliative care services can help with these and other problems that result from a life-limiting illness.
Palliative care can be provided in the early stages of an illness. This can happen while people are still having active treatment. Palliative care teams will often work alongside other health teams to provide care together.
It may be more difficult for a person who doesn’t have cancer to accept palliative care. Over the years active treatment may have been given even when that person has been quite seriously ill. It can be difficult to now recognise when the person should be referred for support from palliative care. Things may not appear to be very different now, or are perhaps slowly changing, which can make it difficult.
Resources
Related CareSearch pages
What is palliative care?
Referring to palliative care
Disease specific resources
This page was created on 26 May 2009 and is due for review in May 2011