Rakesh Roy
Saroj Gupta Cancer Centre & Research Institute, India
Title: Scope of adding chemotherapy in patients receiving palliative care
Biography
Biography: Rakesh Roy
Abstract
In patients with advanced solid tumours, the aim is to provide symptom management in order to improve quality of life and at times improve survival. Palliative care improves quality of life by addressing symptom burden. The burning question is who are the patients who should receive only palliative care and not added anticancer therapy ? Various patient and disease related factors like – burden of symptom, type of solid tumour, chemosensitivity of the tumour, performance status of patient, past treatment, hormonal sensitivity for breast and prostate cancers, life expectancy, patient and caregiver’s wish, evidence from literatures, enthusiasm of oncologists to do something good for patients, more and more use of targeted therapy, improvement in medical science, price drop of certain drugs, clinical trials etc may contribute to higher number of patients getting chemotherapy in advanced settings. In settings where there is a limitation of resource and paucity of clinical trials less patients end up getting palliative chemotherapy, and those who get it, if selection is inappropiate then a horrible turn of events may reduce Quality of Life (QOL). Situation has changed with introduction of less toxic and more molecularly driven targeted agents. These drugs are prolonging survival with accepted toxicity profile. Many patients have ended getting anticancer agents in their last month of life. This current talk tries to discuss at length the scope of adding chemotherapy as a tool of palliation and survival improvement along with institutional palliative care.