7.30pm
Thursday 22 December 2022
Books – Sayed Metwally
When a doctor determines that a patient’s cancer can no longer be controlled, palliative care replaces treatment. While the chances of survival are slim, prescribing it is important for a variety of reasons.
Early care for such patients can reduce their symptom burden, for example, and in most cases, the cancer isn’t diagnosed until after symptoms appear, usually in advanced stages.
Since the cancer is likely to have spread by this stage, the patient’s chances of survival tend to be slim. Unfortunately, cancer can be a slow-growing disease that sometimes takes years for symptoms to appear.
Sometimes, people survive for months, or even a year, with terminal cancer, with or without treatment.
Some studies have tried to narrow down the key features of each stage of the disease in an effort to help refine diagnostic procedures.
To help clarify the characteristics of end-stage cancer, a review published in Dialogues in Clinic Neuroscience looked at 44 different studies.
“Patients with end-stage cancer have an enormous symptom burden,” the researchers explained. “Data from thousands of patients indicate a high prevalence of five symptoms among individuals with terminal cancer.”
The researchers noted that “five symptoms (fatigue, pain, lack of energy, weakness and loss of appetite) were reported in over 50% of patients.”
The prevalence of neuroticism and depression was 48% and 39%, respectively. As described earlier, many of the major diagnostic symptoms of depression are precisely those that cancer patients commonly experience at the end of life.
Importantly, physical symptoms often co-occur with depression in cancer patients and are associated with greater disability.
Stage IV cancer is diagnosed when the disease has spread from where it started to at least one other organ in the body.
Some people die very quickly from cancer, especially if there are unexpected complications or the cancer is very aggressive. In other cases, it may take months or years. However, as the cancer grows or spreads, it will begin to affect more organs and basis bodily processes that they perform.
Is it possible to survive the fourth stage of cancer?
Although the overall prognosis for stage IV cancer is poor, many patients continue to live for years after diagnosis.
Stage 4 cancer doesn’t necessarily mean the disease is irreversible, but its spread has made it more difficult to manage.
The likelihood of whether or not a person will survive stage 4 cancer is determined by the type of cancer and where it has spread.
Lung and bronchial cancers, for example, cause more deaths than any other type of cancer because the lungs cannot be seen or touched.
There are other types of cancer that are notoriously difficult to survive in advanced stages, such as colorectal and pancreatic cancer, although symptoms are more likely to appear early.
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