[The palliative care in the clinical oncology]

With the development of the medical oncology, the progress of the diagnosis and the treatment for cancer patients have provided the improvement of overall survival rates. Furthermore, the importance of the palliative care, which give the relief of the pain and maintain or improve quality of life in cancer patients, has become to be recognized recently. Because the palliative care aims to provide the cancer patients and families with the relief of "total pain", which means the complex etiology of pain, including its physical, emotional, social, economic, and spiritual components, it has been adapted not only at the terminally period but also at the beginning of the cancer treatment. Therefore, an interdisciplinary collaboration with a variety of experts is required for palliative care. Although there is a lot of problem to be solved for palliative care in Japan, each expert should investigate his own speciality but also collaborate with another.