Top Palliative Care Stories From 2024

This year, CURE® worked to provide education and insight that underscored the importance of palliative care in cancer treatment.

Early integration of palliative care, whether through in-person visits, telehealth or ongoing emotional support, can make a significant difference in a patient's quality of life.

Here are some of the top articles on the topic of palliative care from 2024.

READ MORE: Patients With Cancer Can Benefit from Palliative Care Earlier

In an interview with CURE®, Dr. Cari Low of the University of Utah Huntsman Cancer Institute urged patients with cancer to begin discussing palliative care options with their care team as early in the cancer journey as possible.

“We know that for folks who do receive palliative care in the outpatient setting, they have a significantly lower likelihood of needing to go to the emergency room or be admitted, and for those patients who receive palliative care on the inpatient side, [there is] a 50% lower likelihood of being readmitted to the hospital,” said Low, an associate professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine and the medical director of the University of Utah Supportive and Palliative Care Program.

READ MORE: Busting Palliative Care Misconceptions in Cancer Care

Low also helped clear up some misconceptions that persist regarding palliative care in cancer.

Foremost among those misconceptions is that palliative care is synonymous with hospice care, another type of supportive care.

“I really think of palliative care as appropriate for any stage of illness,” Low said. “We follow patients from the time of diagnosis through their curative cancer treatment and throughout their journey and into survivorship. And while we hope that every patient's cancer journey does move into that survivorship phase, we are aware that not everybody has that cancer journey, and so that's where hospice comes into play. Hospice is really focused on end-of-life care and comfort when cancer treatments no longer make sense.”

READ MORE: Telehealth Palliative Care Comparable to In-Person Visits

For patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), early palliative care delivered virtually was as effective as in-person care, according to findings published in JAMA and presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting.

The REACH-PC study enrolled 1,250 patients within 12 weeks of receiving a diagnosis of advanced NSCLC as well as 548 caregivers and assigned them to meet with a trained palliative care clinician every four weeks either through a telehealth video visit or in person, with members of the video group having an initial in-person visit.

After 24 weeks, the participants had a mean of 4.7 video visits and 4.9 in-person visits, with researchers reporting that quality-of-life scores were equivalent between the two groups. Likewise, researchers reported similar outcomes between the two groups regarding caregiver quality of life, patient coping, patient and caregiver satisfaction with care, mood symptoms and prognostic perceptions.

READ MORE: Early Palliative Care Can Help With Coping Skills in Advanced Cancers

Receiving palliative care following an advanced cancer diagnosis resulted in greater self-management and coping skills for patients and may also have a positive impact on survival.

Researchers, in a study published in JAMA Network Open, analyzed144 patients from South Korea with advanced cancer who were divided into two groups, with one group including 71 patients who were treated with standard cancer care and 73 patients who received early palliative care.

There were no significant differences of quality of life between the two groups during weeks 12 and 24, but there was a significantly higher score at 18 weeks when comparing baseline (quality of life before the study) with early palliative care, particularly with appetite loss and constipation. At 24 weeks, there were significant differences in physical functioning and fatigue.

READ MORE: From Comfort to Cure in Cancer Care: Use Palliative Care From the Start

Dr. Janet Abraham — a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an Institute Physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, practicing palliative care at Brigham and Women’s Hospital — shared an opinion piece where she emphasized the importance of utilizing palliative care from the beginning of a patient’s cancer journey.

“Research shows that integration can even be life-prolonging for patients with metastatic lung cancer,” Abraham wrote. “Patients who saw a palliative care clinician within three weeks of diagnosis lived almost three months longer than those who only saw palliative care if their oncologist asked for a consultation.”

For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don’t forget to subscribe to CURE®’s newsletters here.