If you haven’t read our article about palliative care, then you should know it is a program focused on improving the quality of a person’s life. There is a significant difference between palliative and hospice care, since it is not necessarily focused on terminally ill patients. However, today we will try to answer the question – is palliative care effective and should you consider it?
Is Palliative Care Effective? – Study
Nowadays, there are more and more hospitals and medical schools introducing palliative care programs. And it’s no wonder. In 2010, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital published their findings regarding palliative care, where they followed 151 patients with an advanced lung cancer. Some of them had a standard method of care, while the others were assigned to a palliative care program.
Source: https://img.webmd.com/
Apparently, patients who received the latter didn’t have high rates of depression and their quality of life was much better than those who received the typical care.
Patients Live Longer
As the New England Journal of Medicine shows, these researchers concluded that patients who received palliative care live longer – 2.7 months on average. This can be assigned to the lower rates of depression and the better management of symptoms. Since pain management plays a major role in this program, it makes sense these patients lived longer on average, since pain is bad for everyone and no one should suffer.
To conclude and answer the question, is palliative care effective? Yes, it is. This example was about terminally ill patients, but that doesn’t mean it is not effective for non-terminal patients. Everyone can benefit from palliative care and you should take it into consideration when choosing a proper avenue for your loved one. No one should live in pain and, in the end, quality of life is the most important thing.
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