This new edition provides the essential clinical guidance both for those embarking upon a career in palliative medicine and for those already established in the field. A team of international experts here distil what every practitioner needs to know into a practical and reliable resource.

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.

Nutrition, appetite, and involuntary weight loss are issues that affect a large number of cancer patients and cancer survivors. Aspects such as symptom management, behavioural modification, exercise and medication are all important aspects of cancer care, but nutritional issues at the end of life can be accompanied by contentious ethical factors as well as religious and cultural influences that need to be addressed by health professionals. This book enables physicians, nurses and also dieticians to better discuss these complex issues with patients and their families.
This comprehensive reference book provides both background information and practical, clinical advice for managing the cancer patient at all stages of their disease trajectory. It includes information that relates to patients who are continuing to receive disease-specific therapy, the cancer survivor, as well as patients with advanced or recurrent cancer receiving palliative care.
Basic principles such as epidemiology and physiology set the scene, leading into the cachexia/anorexia syndrome, treatment options, nutritional counselling, enteral and parenteral nutrition, complementary/alternative therapies, exercise, clinical outcomes measures in each of the clinical groups, and focus on special populations and their specific needs. Multidimensional, interdisciplinary clinical evaluation and treatment is emphasised, and ethical, religious, and cultural factors are also addressed.
Multidisciplinary in nature, this book draws on the experience of the editors' work across the fields of oncology, palliative care, surgery, primary care, nursing, dietetics and nutritional science. It will prove invaluable to all general practitioners, internists, medical oncologists and surgeons, nurses, palliative care specialists and related professionals involved in the care of the cancer patient.

Patients with advanced cancer may develop a number of clinical complications related to tumor progression or a variety of aggressive treatments. The majority of these patients are elderly, often with multiple co-morbidities that require appropriate assessment and management. In the palliative stage of their disease, patients undergo a progressive transition from active acute care to community-based hospice care. This transition requires modification in the diagnostic tests, monitoring procedures and pharmacological treatments to adjust them to the palliative and short-term nature of the care. Internal Medicine Issues in Palliative Cancer Care looks at internal medicine through a prognosis-based framework and provides a practical approach to maximizing comfort and quality of life while minimizing aggressive investigations and therapies for patients with life-limiting disease. Forty-six common internal medicine conditions are organized into nine clinical categories: pulmonary, cardiovascular, nephrologic and metabolic, gastrointestinal, hematologic, infectious, endocrine, rheumatologic, and neuro-psychiatric. This evidence-based resource is ideal for educating clinicians delivering palliative care to cancer patients in acute care facilities about complex internal medicine problems, decision-making regarding diagnostics and therapeutics which require a good understanding of state-of-the-art internal medicine and palliative care principles.

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 the 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 engaged 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 practioners at the bedside, the findings of empirical research. Topics in Palliative Care Series is divided into sections that address a range of issues. Addressing aspects of sumptom control, psyshocsoical 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 for analysis. The authors present and evaluate existing data, provide a context drawn from clinical and research settings, and integrate knowledge in a manner that is both practical and readable. The specific topics covered in Volume 5 are Cultural issues in Palliative Care, Palliative Care in Geriatrics, Communication Issues in Palliative Care, Outcomes Research in Palliative Care, Opiod Tolerance; Reality of Myth?, and Pain and other symptoms: Treatment Challenges.

This is the fourth book in a series devoted to research and practice in palliative care. This rapidly evolving field focuses on the management of phenomena that produce discomfort and undermine the quality of life of patients with incurable medical disorders. To highlight the diversity in this field, each volume is divided into sections that address a range of issues. Various sections discuss aspects of symptom control, psychosocial functioning, spiritual orr existential concerns, ethics, and other topics. The four sections in this volume are; Survival Estimation in Palliative Care, Education and Training in Palliative Care, Procoagulant and Anticoagulant Therapy in Palliative Care, and Issues in the Assessment and Management of Common Symptoms. The authors present and evaluate existing data, provide a context drawn from both the clinic and research, and integrate knowledge in a manner that is both practical and readable.

Palliative care is rapidly evolving as a multidimensional therapeutic model devoted to improving the quality of life of all patients with life-threatening illness. Symptom control, management of psychosocial and spiritual concerns, decision making consistent with values and goals, and care of the imminently dying that is appropriate and sensitive to the unique needs of the individual and family - these are among the critical issues addressed through palliative care. As this discipline has evolved, the need for research in all these areas has become widely acknowledged. Issues in Palliative Care Research describes both the progress that already has been made in the investigation of these issues and the methodological elements that must be addressed in future studies. The perspective is broad and the overriding goal is to inform about the state of the art in these rapidly evolving areas of research.

Currently, there is no comprehensive source of information available to non-specialist physicians and nurses providing end-of-life care for advanced cancer patients at a level between specialist oncology texts and nursing texts. Two eminent physicians from one of the world's foremost cancer centers have drawn together a remarkable team to provide a handbook which covers the full range of problems non-specialists will encounter. This highly accessible text covers general principles in oncology, each of the primary tumors, and management of specific symptoms and syndromes.

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.