First, her mother-in-law was diagnosed with late-stage colon cancer. Then, as she was coming out of a procedure in the hospital, her father-in-law suffered a massive stroke."It was a nightmare,” said Siderow, a New York-based healthcare consultant.To get more Health News, you can visit shine news official website.

Siderow helped other family members care for both husband and wife as they went through treatment starting in December 2011 and, finally, died. And for Siderow, one thing made a huge difference for both of her in-laws: palliative care."Before palliative care, no one really made sure that we understood the diagnosis. No one made sure that we understood the prognosis. No one made sure we understood what was going on,” she added.

"We had no sense that anyone was talking to each other, which is typical of the U.S. healthcare system.”Her mother-in-law died within a few months, after first trying every treatment possible. Her father-in-law lived for four years. In both cases, Siderow feels the palliative care team gave her in-laws, whom she does not wish to name, comfort and dignity in their last weeks and months of life.

Palliative care is a team approach. "Care is usually provided by an interdisciplinary team of experts, including palliative care doctors, nurses, and social workers,” the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine says.Chaplains, counselors, massage therapists, pharmacists, nutritionists, and others might also be part of the team.”

It sounds expensive and complicated. But a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s JAMA Internal Medicine shows that palliative care teams can actually cut costs.

On average, hospital costs alone were more than $3,000 lower if patients were started on palliative care within three days of admission, the team, led by Dr. Peter May of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland reported.Palliative care — sometimes called comfort care — hit the headlines earlier this month when former first lady Barbara Bush said she was opting for comfort care just days before she died.

Dr. Sean Morrison of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who worked on the study team, said people often misunderstand what palliative care is. They often fear that palliative care and hospice care mean giving up.The approach includes treating a patient’s pain and symptoms such as breathlessness so they can better understand options, communicate and withstand the stress of medical treatment.

"Every single study that has compared palliative care to usual care — there has never been a study that shows people’s lives are shortened when they receive palliative care,” Morrison said."We know that there is a very, very strong database that demonstrates when palliative care is provided at the time of other appropriate treatment, patients feel better, their quality of life improves, their families feel better and, particularly in the case of cancer, they live longer.”

Posted by: shinenewstop at 03:20 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 476 words, total size 3 kb.