Palliative Care for Non-Cancer Patients in Tertiary Care Hospitals

In the recent times medical fraternity has realized the limitations of curative medicine in improving the quality of life of patients suffering from chronic diseases and importance of palliative medicine in caring for these patients. Palliative care is now recognized as the need of not only cancer patients but also people with HIV, severe kidney disease, heart failure, end stage lung disease, progressive neurological diseases and other life limiting illnesses.¹ In 2010 the major contributions to diseases requiring palliative care in India were from non-communicable diseases that accounted for 53% of all deaths. Among them, cancers constituted only 6%, whereas cardiovascular diseases contributed to 24% followed by respiratory diseases (11%), injuries (10%) and diabetes (2%).² As per the Global Atlas of Palliative care, the common conditions among adults and children which require palliative care are given in Table 1. The less common conditions are multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (0.8%), Parkinson’s disease (0.48%), rheumatoid arthritis (0.27%) and multiple sclerosis (0.04%) among adults and cardiovascular diseases (6.18%), endocrine and blood immune disorders (5.85%), cancer (5.69%), neurological conditions (2.31%), kidney diseases (2.25%), cirrhosis of liver (1.06%) among children.³ Read more...