Symptom control problems in an Indian hospice

Symptom control is the essence of palliative care but is not without problems, especially in the difficult socio-economic conditions of a developing country. We present our experience with over 2000 hospice admissions over six years in India's first hospice, to highlight our problems and the measures we have taken to solve them. The prevalent habit of tobacco smoking and chewing in India gives rise to a high incidence of head and neck cancers which form 50% of our admissions. Another 24% is formed by breast and gynaecological cancers. The difficult symptoms in head and neck cancers are pain, dysphagia, fungation and trismus. Almost 25% of our head and neck cancers have feeding tubes, which we feel are justified and most useful for medication and basic nutrition. Difficult problems in gynaecological cancers are pain, chronic blood loss, ulcerations and fistulae. The inadequate or sporadic availability of oral and injectable morphine adds to our problems in pain control. Non-compliance of patients to take adequate medications and the resistance from relatives make it sometimes difficult to achieve optimum symptom control. India has many systems of alternate and unorthodox medicine. We find that these are best tried outside the hospice unless they are in fully-studied clinical trials. In the end there is always the difficult choice of either remaining in the hospice for optimal symptom control or going back to their homes, where this may not be available.