Creating Effective Models for Delivering Palliative Care in Advanced Liver Disease

The current healthcare system is not fully equipped to provide comprehensive support for patients with advanced liver disease (ALD) and their caregivers resulting in concomitant suffering and reduced quality of life (QoL). Integration of palliative care (PC) within routine care has demonstrated benefits in improving symptoms and QoL and reducing healthcare utilization for other serious illnesses but has been underutilized or delayed for ALD care. The purpose of this article is to outline the domains and benefits of PC and discuss the misconceptions and barriers for PC integration, and healthcare delivery models supporting PC integration within ALD care.

PC has eight key domains related to physical and mental health, goals for future care, and care of the caregivers. PC offers benefits to improve health outcomes and patient satisfaction and reduce healthcare utilization. To date there have been successful models of PC that are primarily hospital- or community-based; successful models have been PC specialist- or primary/generalist-led.

Concurrent PC within oncology has formed the basis for most evidence-based guidelines. PC integration within ALD care is still in its infancy. While amassing evidence in ALD, hepatology organizations can promote consensus-based integrated PC models that can guide research and practice efforts to increase supportive care for these patients in need and their family caregivers.