Palliative care improves quality of life and reduces symptom burden in adults with life-limiting illness

Commentary on: KavalieratosDCorbelliJZhangD. Association between palliative care and patient and caregiver outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA2016;316:2104–14.

Implications for practice and research

Palliative care (PC) improves patients' quality of life and symptom burden. There is also some evidence that it increases care satisfaction and reduces healthcare usage.

The impact of PC on caregiver outcomes needs more attention in future research.

PC needs a standardised outcome measurement framework to be able to fully demonstrate its impact.

Further development of integrated PC models is needed.

Content

Palliative care (PC) focuses on improving quality of life (QoL) and reducing suffering for seriously ill patients and their families, and has become an international health priority.1 The previous decade saw increasing evidence of an association between PC and better outcomes.2 As a result, PC has been included in international guidelines, which recommend PC integration early in the disease trajectory.1

Methods

Kavalieratos et...

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