ABSTRACT
Medical care of a cancer patient does not stop when there is no curative treatment to offer and indeed over 50% of cancer treatments are palliative. In this area lie many of the greatest challenges in patient care – controlling pain, dyspnoea, vomiting, haemorrhage and other tumour-related symptoms. This chapter discusses these challenges in patient care. Careful evaluation of pain is important in this group of patients in order that treatment can be directed to the principal underlying cause. The measurement of pain on an objective scale is of value, particularly in monitoring response to treatment. The use of analgesics in this situation should be based on a simple three-step analgesic ladder progressively escalating the potency of drug used. Alongside specific management of cough and dyspnoea, for example aspiration of effusion and antibiotics for overt infection, cough sedatives based on codeine linctus could be tried.
