For many people with cancer and other serious diseases, palliative care is an important element of their journey.
At the University of Colorado Cancer Center and its clinical partner UCHealth, alongside state-of-the-art therapies for their disease, patients are offered palliative care – sometimes called supportive care – to enhance their quality of life. Palliative care helps patients manage symptoms, cope with side effects caused by treatment, deal with challenges related to cancer diagnosis and treatment, and make decisions about their goals.
Palliative care can be valuable at any stage of an illness. When people with cancer are near the end of life or at the last stage of an incurable illness, hospice care – which includes many elements of palliative care – is offered to help with managing symptoms.
To learn more about cancer palliative care, we turned to Stacy Fischer, MD, co-leader of the CU Cancer Center’s Cancer Prevention and Control research program. She is a professor in the CU Anschutz Department of Medicine’s Division of General Internal Medicine. She has conducted palliative care research for 25 years with a focus on improving palliative care outcomes for seriously ill adults.
→ What to Know About Supportive Care Trials
Photo at top: Stacy Fischer, MD, at a CU Cancer Center leadership meeting.