Cancer rehabilitation and palliative care—two important parts of comprehensive cancer care

Excerpt

In this issue of Supportive Care in Cancer, Julie K. Silver et al. focus on cancer rehabilitation and palliative care delineating their respective roles in comprehensive oncology care [1]. The authors describe how cancer rehabilitation and palliative care are quite similar in goal setting, namely to improve physical, cognitive, psychological, and social aspects of quality of life in cancer patients—both specialties prioritizing goal-concordant care through identification of patient and family preferences and values. So both—cancer rehabilitation and palliative care—are able to improve cancer-related symptoms or cancer treatment-related side effects leading not only to (1) improve quality of life of cancer patients and cancer survivors but also to (2) improve healthcare efficiencies. As palliative care is, cancer rehabilitation is an interdisciplinary team process and an individually planned targeted process with the patient and family as active members within the team. Exercise—as a modality typical for cancer rehabilitation—can even help patients where palliative rehabilitation goals are predominant to live longer and independent of others help [2]. Nevertheless, cancer rehabilitation and palliative care are using different specialized skills and approaches in the delivery of care. Typically, palliative care teams focus on using patient and family communication to determine their goals of care, but rehabilitation teams focus more on functional deficits and their resulting impact on disability and quality of life. The authors conclude that further research in cancer rehabilitation and palliative care would support better integration of both into high-quality oncology care. Furthermore, they emphasize earlier integration of cancer rehabilitation and palliative care into the oncology care continuum because this would significantly improve the quality of patient-centered programs. …