Integration of Palliative Care Into Standard Oncology Care: American Society of Clinical Oncology Clinical Practice Guideline Update.

Purpose To provide evidence-based recommendations to oncology clinicians, patients, family and friend caregivers, and palliative care specialists to update the 2012 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) provisional clinical opinion (PCO) on the integration of palliative care into standard oncology care for all patients diagnosed with cancer. Methods ASCO convened an Expert Panel of members of the ASCO Ad Hoc Palliative Care Expert Panel to develop an update. The 2012 PCO was based on a review of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) by the National Cancer Institute Physicians Data Query and additional trials.

Opportunities for targeting the fatigue-anorexia-cachexia symptom cluster.

Cancer patients experience multiple symptoms throughout their illness trajectory. Symptoms consistently occurring together, known as symptom clusters, share common pathophysiologic mechanisms. Understanding and targeting such symptom clusters may allow for more effective and efficient use of treatments for a variety of symptoms.

Development of the CASH assessment tool to address existential concerns in patients with serious illness.

Introduction: Existential suffering in patients with serious illness significantly impacts quality of life, yet it remains a challenge to define, assess, and manage adequately. Improving upon understanding and practice in the existential domain is a topic of interest for palliative care providers.

Methods: As a quality improvement project, our palliative care team created an existential assessment tool utilizing a dialogue-oriented approach with four questions designed to identify sources of existential distress as well as strengths and challenges in coping with this distress.

Doing palliative care in the oncology office.

Palliative care is cited as providing improved communication, symptom control, treatment knowledge, and survival. The authors feel primary palliative care skills should be part of a physician's armamentarium.

American Society of Clinical Oncology provisional clinical opinion: the integration of palliative care into standard oncology care.

Purpose: An American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) provisional clinical opinion (PCO) offers timely clinical direction to ASCO's membership following publication or presentation of potentially practice-changing data from major studies. This PCO addresses the integration of palliative care services into standard oncology practice at the time a person is diagnosed with metastatic or advanced cancer.

Clinical Context: Palliative care is frequently misconstrued as synonymous with end-of-life care.

Palliative care and oncology partnerships in real practice.

This article addresses the practical application of palliative care (PC) in the outpatient oncology setting. While information on this topic is scarce, data published by a few outpatient practices provide the basis for potential models of integrated care. In general, the perceived impact of integrating PC into standard oncology practice is positive for patients, providers, oncology practices, and the healthcare system as a whole.