Palliative Care for Cancer Patients in Asia: Challenges and Countermeasures

Abstract

With the increasing incidence of cancer worldwide, palliative care has become an effective intervention to relieve cancer patients’ pain and improve their quality of life, although the present development of palliative medicine and hospice care in many Asian countries remains insufficient. To this end, this review comprehensively discussed the main challenges that influence the promotion of palliative medicine, from the perspective of both healthcare professionals and cancer patients. We further proposed and summarized a series of potentially effective countermeasures and solutions, including the shared decision-making modal, multidisciplinary professional cooperation, application of modern science and technology, standardization training for medical workers, personalized palliative treatment regimens, and others, aiming to improve the clinical quality of palliative care practice for cancer patients and promote the development of palliative medicine in Asian regions.

Immune modulatory roles of radioimmunotherapy: biological principles and clinical prospects

“…Nevertheless, other studies suggested different RT doses and segmentations played various immunomodulatory role ( 87 ). Some scholars considered low-dose RT, which is commonly used for patients with metastatic diseases as palliative care ( 91 , 92 ), can better induce anti-tumor immune activation at the molecular level, reshape TIME, and improve the infiltration and function of effector immune cells in distant tumor foci ( 9 , 93 – 95 ). Therefore, anti-tumor responses outside the radiation field strengthened by low-dose RT were termed the “RadScopal effect” by them ( 9 , 96 ).…”