Impact of Early Palliative Care on end of life

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Palliative Care Teams (PCT) is composed of several actors making possible a multidisciplinary and global comprehensive care: physical, emotional, social (family caregivers…), spiritual (meaning, dignity, faith…), informational (prognosis, illness understanding…). Palliative care (PC) and systemic palliative therapy are complementary approaches that should be associated early for more benefits. In 2017, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) published recommendations about palliative care, specifying that palliative care should be introduce early in cancer management, at diagnosis and with the beginning of systemic therapy. Despite these recommendations, and probably due to a lack of palliative care teams, patients’ referral to PCT in daily practice is often late (eg: no more therapeutic options, general condition too weak). Recent studies demonstrated the positive impact of PC on aggressiveness of end-of-life care that includes chemotherapy, intensive care unit admission, Emergency Department (ED) visit and acute unit hospitalization, during last month of life. In pancreatic cancer in a retrospective study the positive impact of a PC consultation on these above mentioned end-of-life indicators. These results were confirmed in a prospective multicentric randomized controlled Italian trial including 206 patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer.