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Palliative treatment
Palliative treatment helps to improve people’s quality of life by managing the symptoms of cancer without trying to cure the disease. Many people think that palliative treatment is only for people at the end of their life, but it may help at any stage of advanced cancer.
As well as slowing the spread of cancer, palliative treatment can relieve pain and help manage other symptoms. Treatment may include surgery, radiation therapy, chemotherapy or other medicines or supplements.
Palliative treatment is one aspect of palliative care, in which a team of health professionals aims to meet your physical, emotional, cultural, spiritual and social needs. You can have palliative care services in the home as well as in a hospital or in residential care.
For more on this, see Palliative care and Living with advanced cancer.
My wife Robyn was diagnosed with grade 4 brain cancer when she had just turned 50. After getting a diagnosis like that, you just go into shock for a couple of days, then you start thinking about how things will change, you evaluate your life and what you need to do to help.
Ross
Video: What is Palliative Care?
Watch this video to see how palliative treatment aims to manage symptoms and improve people’s quality of life without trying to cure the disease.
Podcast for people affected by advanced cancer
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More resources
A/Prof Lindy Jeffree, Neurosurgeon, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, QLD; Emma Daly, Neuro-oncology Clinical Nurse Consultant, Cabrini Health, VIC; A/Prof Andrew Davidson, Neurosurgeon, Victorian Gamma Knife Service, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and Department of Neurosurgery, Royal Melbourne Hospital, VIC; Beth Doggett, Consumer; Kate Fernandez, 13 11 20 Consultant, Cancer Council SA; Melissa Harrison, Allied Health Manager and Senior Neurological Physiotherapist, Advance Rehab Centre, NSW; A/Prof Rosemary Harrup, Director, Cancer and Blood Services, Royal Hobart Hospital, TAS; A/Prof Eng-Siew Koh, Radiation Oncologist, Liverpool Cancer Therapy Centre, Liverpool Hospital and University of New South Wales, NSW; Andy Stokes, Consumer.
View the Cancer Council NSW editorial policy.
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