The possible benefit of palliative anti-cancer treatments is that they may control the cancer temporarily. While the cancer is under control, there will probably be less symptoms from it. The patient may feel better, provided the symptoms due to treatment are not as bad as the symptoms due to the cancer were. Sooner or later the cancer will become active again. It will then grow and eventually result in death in much the same way as it would have earlier, if no anti-cancer treatment had been used. In other words, the possible benefit from palliative cancer treatments is that they may delay the eventual outcome. However, they don’t really alter it. In contrast, potentially curative treatments may prevent a person from dying of cancer. Try not to lose sight of the fact that, of course, there is nothing that can prevent you from eventually dying of something. A lot of people with cancer suffer unnecessarily because they let their doctors treat them as though this was not a basic fact of life.
*148/40/1*
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.