CA: a cancer journal for clinicians
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Palliative and end-of-life care is changing in the United States. This dynamic field is improving care for patients with serious and life-threatening cancer through creation of national guidelines for quality care, multidisciplinary educational offerings, research endeavors, and resources made available to clinicians. Barriers to implementing quality palliative care across cancer populations include a rapidly expanding population of older adults who will need cancer care and a decrease in the workforce available to give care. ⋯ Acceptance of palliative care as a recognized medical specialty provides a valuable resource for improvement of care. Although compilation of evidence for the importance of palliative care specialities is in its initial stages, national research grants have provided support to build the knowledge necessary for appropriate palliative care. Opportunities are available to clinicians for understanding and applying appropriate palliative and end-of-life care to patients with serious and life-threatening cancers.
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In the United States, prostate cancer will affect 1 man in 6 during his lifetime. Since the mid-1980s, screening with the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test has more than doubled the risk of a prostate cancer diagnosis. ⋯ Methods to assess a man's risk of prostate cancer, including those tools that integrate multiple risk factors, are now available and should be used in risk assessment. Men undergoing screening for prostate cancer may reduce their risk of prostate cancer with finasteride.
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Patients with advanced cancer face difficult decisions regarding their treatment, and many will need to make difficult choices about end-of-life care because although cancer-directed therapies are increasingly available, few provide a cure. High-quality cancer care includes access to palliative care throughout the cancer care continuum, and increasing evidence suggests that timely enrollment in hospice can increase quality of life for patients dying from cancer. ⋯ In this article, the authors review available tools for prognostication in advanced cancer and present a method for discussing prognosis by using the SPIKES acronym. In addition, by using patient-identified goals and service needs, the authors recommend a method for making a hospice referral after disclosure of poor prognosis.
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While the past decade has seen the development of multiple new interventions to diagnose and treat cancer, as well as to improve the quality of life for cancer patients, many of these interventions have substantial costs. This has resulted in increased scrutiny of the costs of care for cancer, as well as the costs relative to the benefits for cancer treatments. ⋯ This review discusses the components, main types, and analytic issues of health economic evaluations using studies of cancer interventions as examples. We also highlight limitations of these economic evaluations and discuss why members of the cancer community should care about economic analyses.
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The National Institutes of Health reports that 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain, including pain associated with the disease of cancer. Painful conditions can strike anyone, including cancer patients and cancer survivors. Unrelieved severe pain can limit a person's functioning and sometimes even destroy the will to live. ⋯ The Pain & Policy Studies Group developed a research program to evaluate US federal and state policy governing the medical use of pain medication. This article describes 3 national policy evaluations and how the results are being used to document improvements in state pain policies. An emerging role for clinicians and their professional organizations to improve their state's pain policies is discussed.