Palliative Care and Cancer (Including Disease-Modifying Treatments)

The treatment of malignant diseases has made immense progress in recent years. Nevertheless, despite all these successes, cancer is still a disease that frequently leads to premature death, regardless of treatment. At the same time, novel therapeutic approaches such as immunotherapies or disease-modifying treatments offer opportunities to significantly extend patients’ survival with only moderate adverse effects. Either way, many patients will sooner or later reach a point in their disease progression where the involvement of palliative care structures becomes necessary. Therefore, it is crucial that the collaboration between oncology and palliative care works smoothly and is well organized. Yet, determining the best timing for the integration of palliative structures remains difficult to answer in general terms. For this reason, this chapter takes a closer look at these and other key issues at the interface between oncology and palliative care. In particular, we aim to illustrate that these two disciplines are not mutually exclusive, but on the contrary, complement each other perfectly.