A lot of people hear the words “palliative care” and immediately think of “end-of-life care.” This is a big misconception. Palliative care, which refers to symptom management, is something that can, and often should, be incorporated early on into a cancer treatment regimen.
Dr. Erin Salinas, a gynecologic oncologist at Compass Oncology who treats women with ovarian cancer, explains that she often makes sure palliative care specialists are brought in. This is because an increasing number of women are “living for a number of years with recurrent cancer … making this more of a chronic disease,” she says, but the treatment advances that have paved the way for this shift often have side effects that palliative care can help to manage and mitigate.
Read MorePalliative care teams often have different tools to use and, as Dr. Salinas adds, it’s “an extra hand that you can hold along the way while you’re undergoing treatment.”
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