Cancer - hospice

hospice The term hospice was used in medieval times to refer to a lodging for travelers where they could be refreshed and looked after on their journeys. Today hospice refers to a concept of compassionate care for people in the final phase of an incurable illness.

Drug Blocks Constipation Associated with Pain Relievers Nearly 50 percent of patients who receive opioid drugs like morphine for pain management during cancer treatment experience severe opioid-induced constipation...

Doctors often too optimistic in predicting survival Doctors are often overly optimistic when it comes to predicting how long a terminal patient has to live, a miscalculation that may result in the overuse of aggressive treatments and underuse of hospice care in dying patients, a study suggests...

Medicare spending on dying beneficiaries stable Despite advances in medical care, Medicare spending on beneficiaries in the last year of life has changed little in the past two decades...

Life Expectancy Of Terminal Cancer Patients Often Overestimated Researchers at University of Alberta in Canada found that 52 percent of oncology physicians overestimate life expectancy in terminally ill cancer patients...

Pain Research Draws Greater Attention A tumble down a flight of stairs turned Mary Ellen Faysal`s life into a blinding veil of pain, a private agony that persisted for a decade and caused her to contemplate suicide...

Depressing Image of Hospice `Is Outdated' PEOPLE still mistakenly imagine hospices as depressing institutions where people go to die rather than the modern-day reality where half of all patients go...

Flawed Criteria May Bar Patients From Hospice Care Guidelines used by physicians to predict the survival of patients with lung, heart or liver disease may be flawed, and could affect terminally-ill patients eligibility for hospice care...