Palliative care, when should it be a physicians’ choice of treatment?

Abstract

Physicians around the world are trained to promote health, detect and prevent diseases in early stages to avoid their progression and improve quality of life for patients when a disease has reached its advanced stages. However, when doctors face terminally ill patients who develop surgical emergencies due to complications of an underlying condition, it becomes a challenging, sensitive and ethical problem to decide between proceeding with aggressive surgical intervention or providing palliative care. The clinical case discussed here depicts one such situation and underlines the important role that an anesthesiologist fulfills during the final decision-making process.

Keywords:

• Palliative care
• Pain
• Management
• Ethics
• Anesthesiology

ORCID

E. Ruivo http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4609-7472