Doctors have long known that providing palliative care -- a comprehensive service that aims to relieve suffering in people with serious illnesses -- can improve patients' quality of life and overall medical care.
A new study shows palliative care also can help cancer patients live longer.
In a study of 151 patients with advanced lung cancer, those given early palliative care survived 11.6 months, nearly three months longer than those who received standard medical care, according to an article in today's New England Journal of Medicine.
That suggests palliative care -- which focuses on relieving symptoms, supporting caregivers and helping patients make the most of their remaining time -- can improve survival as much as any medication, says study co-author Thomas Lynch, director of the Yale Cancer Center. Chemo can give newly diagnosed lung cancer patients an extra two to three months of life.
Although 80% of large hospitals offer palliative care, many doctors fail to make use of it, often because they see it as akin to giving up, according to an accompanying editorial by Amy Kelley and Diane Meier of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.
Yet evidence for the benefits of palliative care is growing. Other research has shown that lung cancer patients who use hospice -- typically given to those with less than six months to live -- actually live about a month longer than other patients, says Thomas Smith, who leads the palliative care program at Virginia Commonwealth University's Massey Cancer Center and wasn't involved in the study.
Authors note that their study has limitations.
Researchers included only patients at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, a top-tier medical center. It's possible that patients at other hospitals might get different results, Lynch says.
But Smith calls the research a "landmark study" establishing the benefits of giving palliative care early rather than in the final days.
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