Gastrointestinal symptoms such as anorexia-cachexia, chronic nausea, vomiting and bowel obstruction are highly distressing for patients with advanced cancer. Approximately one in three adults will be diagnosed with cancer in their lives and approximately fifty per cent of them will die because of malignancy. More than eighty per cent of patients who die of cancer will present severe gastrointestinal symptoms before death.

This book presents detailed, evidence-based information on each of the gastrointestinal symptoms for a multi-disciplinary audience. Comprehensive guidelines have been included on how to assess the patient, in order to ensure effective treatment, in which prescribing is tailored to the cause of the symptoms and to the patient's individual needs. The book recognises that the aim of good cancer management and palliative care is to assess, diagnose, manage and treat these symptoms to ensure best quality of life.

Aimed primarily at hospice and palliative care specialists, medical, radiation and surgical oncologists and selected family physicians and internists who have an interest in cancer care. The book will also appeal to oncology and academic nurses, nutritionists as well as clinical psychologists with an interest in oncology and/or palliative care.

ALSO PUBLISHED BY OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cancer Pain Management - a comprehensive approach Edited by Karen H Simpson & Keith Budd

Integrated Cancer Care - holistic, complementary and creative approaches Edited by Jennifer Barraclough

The Syringe Driver: continuous subcutaneous infusions in palliative care Andrew Dickman, Clare Littlewood & Jim Varga

When the first edition of A House Called Helen was published in 1993, there were only a handful of children's hospices in existence, all of them within the UK. There are now more than twenty in operation, and a significant number at the project stage, in the UK alone, and children's hospices have been set up in Canada, the USA, Australia and continental Europe. The concept of a children's hospice, seen as innovative when the first, Helen House, opened in Oxford in 1982, is now well established and the growth in the number of children's hospices has seen corresponding important developments in the field of paediatric palliative care. This book provides an authoritative account of how Helen House came into being. It records the events surrounding the foundation of the hospice and how it stemmed directly from what was learnt from the events following the sudden illness of the author's eldest daughter Helen, after whom it was named. The book sets out the philosophy which underpinned the hospice, which was taken up as the guiding philosophy of children's hospice care. It describes the hospice's operational framework and details the service provided by Helen House, which is widely cited as a model for children's hospice care worldwide. It provides valuable insight into the needs of the families who use hospice services and touches both on the difficulties they face caring, often over a long period of time, for a child with a life-limiting illness, and on the role and attitudes of professionals and indeed of the public at large. In this new edition an additional chapter reviews the growth of children's hospices and reflects on the challenges they face in their maturity. It considers the development of children's hospice care in relation to wider service provision and examines current and future issues surrounding the care of children with life-limiting illness.

This well-written text is designed to help students and health professionals understand oncology through real-life clinical scenarios, helping treatment and management decisions. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, this practical case-based format is fun to use and imparts a sense of reality to the learning process. The first chapter presents clinically relevant data from molecular biology, statistics and trial analysis, and Quality of Life research with an emphasis on what practising clinicians should know, but might have difficulty finding elsewhere in a digestible form. The second chapter, Making Management Decisions in Oncology presents the principles which guide decision making in oncology and covers the integration of tumour factors, patient factors and treatment factors into the decision making process. Cancer management requires the skills of a variety of clinicians - surgical oncologists, radiation oncologists, medical oncologists, palliative care physicians, oncology nurses and others. The integration of these disciplines into the overall management of each major tumour type has been emphasised in subsequent chapters. * covers oncology in over 80 cases * includes a guide to oncology information and evidence databases on the Internet * includes considerable coverage of issues in supportive care and symptom control. * deals with issues such as Breaking Bad News & Dealing with Angry Patients

This book provides an up-to-date account of how to deal with the major chronic pain syndromes, including back pain, body and myofascial pain, malignant diseases, neurogenic pain, and headaches. It covers the background knowledge required in practice, and gives clear and concise advice on managing patients who suffer chronic pain. This book is not a technical manual but provides the essential practical information required for effective patient management.

Hospices have played a critical role in transforming ideas about death and dying. Viewing death as a natural event, hospices seek to enable people approaching mortality to live as fully and painlessly as possible. Award-winning medical historian Emily K. Abel provides insight into several important issues surrounding the growth of hospice care. Using a unique set of records, Prelude to Hospice expands our understanding of the history of U.S. hospices. Compiled largely by Florence Wald, the founder of the first U.S. hospice, the records provide a detailed account of her experiences studying and caring for dying people and their families in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although Wald never published a report of her findings, she often presented her material informally. Like many others seeking to found new institutions, she believed she could garner support only by demonstrating that her facility would be superior in every respect to what currently existed. As a result, she generated inflated expectations about what a hospice could accomplish. Wald's records enable us to glimpse the complexities of the work of tending to dying people.

The Oxford American Handbook of Hospice and Palliative Medicine and Supportive Care is an easily-navigable source of information about the day-to-day management of patients requiring palliative and hospice care. The table of contents follows the core curriculum of the American Board of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, thus meeting the educational and clinical information needs of students, residents, fellows, and nurse practitioners. Succinct, evidence-based, topically-focused content is supplemented by extensive tables, algorithms, and clinical pearls. This edition includes new sections on grief and bereavement, medical marijuana, and physician assisted suicide, and has been updated throughout to incorporate National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care Clinical Practice Guidelines.

The question of whether euthanasia and assisted suicide should be legalized is often treated, by judges and commentators alike, as a universal, ethical question, transcending national boundaries and diverse legal systems. By thinking of the issue in this way, the important context in which individual jurisdictions make decisions about assisted dying and the significance of the legal methods chosen to carry out those decisions is often lost. This book examines the impact of the choice of diverse legal routes towards legalization on the subsequent assisted dying regimes in operation. This examination suggests that greater caution is needed before relying on the experience of one jurisdiction when discussing proposals for regulation of assisted dying in others. The book seeks to demonstrate the need to explore the legal environment in which assisted dying is performed or proposed in order to evaluate the relevance of a particular legal experience to other jurisdictions. The book begins with an examination of the unsuccessful attempts to use constitutionally entrenched human rights claims to challenge criminal prohibitions on assisted suicide which reached the highest courts in the United States, Canada and Europe. Their failure makes legalization through a rights-based claim unlikely in any major common law or European jurisdiction. Alternative routes towards legalization are then discussed, including the defence of necessity, by which euthanasia was effectively legalized in the Netherlands and an approach based on compassion which has been proposed in France, as well as the legislative approaches which have been taken in Oregon, Belgium and the Northern Territory of Australia. All of these approaches are compared in detail, with particular attention paid to the effectiveness and transferability of the ubiquitous slippery slope arguments

From the internationally acclaimed author of the groundbreaking and award-winning book Dementia Beyond Drugs comes another eye-opening exploration of how to improve the lives of people with dementia and those who care for them. In this revised edition-including updated facts, studies, and terminology-Dr. G. Allen Power demonstrates how to achieve sustainable success in dementia care by changing the caregiving lens to focus on well-being and the ways in which it can be enhanced in people living with dementia. Revealing how drug-based interventions as well as completely holistic approaches consistently fall short of addressing and meeting the needs of people with dementia, this book offers a proactive approach-one that challenges widely accepted dementia care practices and provides a compelling new framework for developing more effective dementia services. Through in-depth examinations of seven domains of well-being, readers will discover how current care practices erode them, and the transformative approaches that can restore them, plus: how to apply a well-being approach to the everyday care of people living with dementia a highly adaptable framework that can be adopted in any living environment valuable insight on overcoming physical and operational barriers to well-being a wealth of person-centered, strengths-based approaches to care Filled with true stories that demonstrate the power of a well-being approach to greatly improve the lives of people with dementia as well as those who care for them, this book presents methods that promise a new and hopeful vision for achieving the best possible outcomes for every person living with cognitive changes. Readers will be challenged, motivated, and profoundly inspired.

Palliative care is a rapidly evolving field focused on the management of problems that undermine the quality of life of patients with progressive incurable medical disorders. It is fundamentally concerned with all factors- physical, psychological, social, and spiritual- that contribute to suffering, and prevent a death with comfort and dignity. Palliative care is a fundamental aspect to good clinical practice, the "parallel universe" to therapies directed at cure or prolongation of life. All clinicians who treat patients with chronic life-threatening diseases are engaged in providing palliative care, continually attempting to manage complex symptomatology and functional disturbances.
The scholarly foundation of palliative care is advancing, and resources are needed to highlight the findings of empirical research. TOPICS IN PALLIATIVE CARE has been designed to meet the need for enhanced communication in this field. To highlight the diversity of concerns in palliative care, each volume of the TOPICS IN PALLIATIVE CARE Series is divided into sections that address a range of salient issues: symptom control, psychosocial functioning, spiritual or existential concerns, and ethics. The authors present and evaluate existing data, provide a context drawn from both the clinical and research settings, and integrate knowledge in a manner that is both practical and readable. The specific topics in this volume are: Pediatric Palliative Care, Management of Bone Pain, Psychopathology in Patients with Cancer, and Skin Disorders and their Management.

The rapidly evolving field of Palliative Care focuses on the management of phenomena that produce discomfort and that undermine the quality of life of patients with incurable medical disorders. The interdisciplinary clinical purview includes those factors - physical, psychological, social, and spiritual - that contribute to suffering, undermine quality of life, and prevent a death with comfort and dignity. Palliative Care is a fundamental part of clinical practice, the "parallel universe" to therapies directed at cure or prolongation of life. All clinicians who treat patients with chronic life-threatening diseases are ingaged in palliative care, continually attempting to manage complex symptomatology and functional disturbances.
The scientific foundation of palliative care is advancing, and similarly, methods are needed to highlight, for practitioners at the bedside, the findings of empirical research. TOPICS IN PALLIATIVE CARE has been designed to meet the need for enhanced communication in this field.
To highlight the diversity of concerns in palliative care, each volume of the TOPICS IN PALLIATIVE CARE Series is divided into sections that address a range of issues. Addressing aspects of symptom control, psychosocial functioning, spiritual or existential concerns, ethics, and other topics, the chapters in each section review the given area and focus on a small number of salient issues to analysis. The authors present and evaluate existing data, provide a context drawn from both the clinical and research settings, and integrate knowledge in a manner that is both practical and readable. The specific topics covered in Volume 2 are Neuropathic Pain, Cachexia/Anorexia, Asthenia, and Psychological Issues in the Caregiver.

Palliative care, which focuses on the management of phenomena that produce discomfort and otherwise undermine the quality of life of patients with incurable medical disorders, is a clinical specialty that is just beginning to define itself in the United States. This first volume in the Supportive Care Medicine series will discuss palliative care topics, such as pharmacotherapy of pain, adjustments to cancer, management of delirium, and gastrointestinal disorders.

This second edition of the Oxford Handbook of Cancer Nursing is an essential aid to the practising cancer nurse. It provides a quick reference to the key issues in cancer nursing, and a concise and systematic account of all of the main areas of cancer nursing practice. Filled with key tips and reflection points, each chapter supports professional development for the reader. The patient, their family, and the experience of cancer are at the heart of this handbook. For the new edition there is a greater focus on survivorship, drawing on recent developments in the area. The Oxford Handbook of Cancer Nursing promotes a multidisciplinary approach to cancer care, with references to current best evidence and the latest developments in treatment. Detailed guidance on complex aspects of care are outlined, integrating both psychosocial and physical care to better treat the whole patient. Written by experienced nurses, the book is laid out to enable quick access to precise, targeted information on the vast majority of potential clinical scenarios.

Psycho-Oncology in Palliative and End-of-Life Care provides expert advice and clinical management guidelines on the impact of advanced cancer and its treatment on the life and wellbeing of a patient in palliative and end-of-life care. Employing a practical toolkit format, this volume addresses a variety of key challenges including: discussions of death and dying, poor prognoses, wishes and values of the dying person, advance care plans, anxiety, demoralization and problems with coping, depression and delirium, the needs of partners, children, families, and caregivers, and spiritual and bereavement care. Each chapter considers presenting symptoms, differential diagnoses and assessment methods to achieve the best diagnosis, so that a detailed formulation can be developed for each person that guides a comprehensive management plan. Each section concludes with professional and service issues ranging from ethical dilemmas, legal requirements, cultural needs, and training and service development issues, through to basic human rights. Part of the Psycho-Oncology Care: Companion Guides for Clinicians series, this concise pocket guide is a resource for oncology specialists, psycho-oncologists in training, consultant nurse specialists and nurse practitioners, and allied health professionals to use as a quick reference in everyday practice. Pitched at intermediate to advanced level skills, this companion guide can be used as a standalone, or alongside existing oncology and psycho-oncology training programs.

In the new edition of this unique professional resource, hospice and palliative care team members-especially social workers and counselors-will find the empirical evidence and compassionate advice they need to provide excellent holistic psychosocial care to individuals who are dying or bereaved. Encompassing the journey through diagnosis, treatment, recurrence, palliative care, and bereavement, this guide describes appropriate interventions for each of the key transitions that more dying patients and their families face. Included throughout are personal reflections and experiences of social workers, counselors, and other team members, common major challenges to the healthcare team, and important considerations for each transition.