Palliative Care - What's the Special Sauce?

We are fortunate today to interview two oncologists whose research has catapulted palliative care forward: Jennifer Temel, author of the landmark NEJM study on early outpatient palliative care for patients with advanced lung cancer; and Areej El-Jawahri, author of the landmark JAMA article on inpatient palliative care for patients with blood cancers undergoing stem cell transplant.  

Jennifer’s study is most widely known for the “kicker” - not only did it improve quality of life, palliative care was associated with a couple months longer survival.  

Areej’s study is remarkably novel in that it is, to our knowledge, the first study of palliative care during curative treatment.  

We cover a huge amount of ground today, including:

• Jennifer’s reaction when she unblinded the study and found that palliative care was associated with prolonged life
• Differences between inpatient and outpatient palliative care for cancer
• What’s in the secret sauce of palliative care?  (hint: coping)
• What’s the right dose of palliative care?
• Do we need separate palliative care models for each cancer?
• What is next for these two? 
• Celine Dion

Additional links:

• Editorial on Areej’s study
• Palliative care in lung and GI cancers
• GeriPal post on qualitative study of the Temel RCT
• GeriPal post on “fast food” style palliative care in chronic critical illness
• JAMA paper on remote symptom monitoring in cancer