Palliative Care at the Cutting Edge: Recent Updates in Surgical Palliative Care

Surgical patients with serious illness often experience unique clinical trajectories, systems of care, and relationships with providers. In order to meet the needs of this patient population and their care teams, hospice and palliative medicine professionals should be familiar with evolving best practices in surgical palliative care. We present the case of a geriatric trauma patient with a new diagnosis of advanced cancer cared for in a surgical intensive care unit. This example highlights important new developments in defining and supporting the geriatric trauma population, improving and expanding surgical palliative care education, and identifying which seriously ill surgical patients benefit most from palliative care interventions.