Quality of life, heart rate, breathing, and pain: palliative care parameters and symptoms

Palliative care is specialized medical care for patients with serious illnesses. Palliative care focuses on providing patients with relief from the symptoms from their illness to improve quality of life both for patients and their families. In this issue of Annals of Palliative Medicine, Agarwal et al. report their findings from their prospective study assessing quality of life before and 12 months after definitive therapy for oral tongue cancer (1). They found that treatment with resection and adjuvant radiation therapy improves pain scores, overall activity, recreational activities, and mental status. This is in keeping with prior reports showing that cancer-directed therapy with the intent to treat the underlying malignancy and improve clinical outcomes, when combined with early palliative care, can improve quality of life and also improve overall survival (2).