Palliative care for patients with advanced cancer

The increasing life expectancy in Saudi Arabia will be accompanied by an alteration of the patterns of disease similar to that in Western countries. One of these will be cancer, the second leading cause of death in the west at present, where 1:3 people develop cancer during their lifetime and 1:4 die of it. Cancer deaths are rarely easy. The distress particularly the pain it can cause is legendary. Palliative care is the care and study of patients with active progressive far advanced disease, where cure is impossible, the prognosis predictably short, and the focus of care is the patient's quality of life. A Palliative Care Program has been developed at KFSH&RC, since 1991. This has broadened the spectrum of health services available to cancer patients. Palliative care needs to be more widely available in the kingdom to relieve an important cause of human suffering.