Palliative cancer care: an epidemiologic study.

Purpose: To analyze the need for palliative care in hospital patients who have cancer. Palliative care is an essential component of comprehensive cancer care and identification of palliative care needs (PCNs) of patients with cancer is a topic that has not been thoroughly studied.

Patients And Methods: Data were collected prospectively from inpatients of University Medical Center Freiburg in Freiburg, Germany, with 982 hospital beds included in the study.