Should I be thinking about palliative care or hospice? What is the difference?

Hi, thank you for reaching out to us! Palliative care and hospice care have similar focuses. Palliative care may be used in conjunction with your medical treatment for your lung cancer. It focuses its aim to alleviate symptoms and maximize your quality of life via alleviating physical symptoms, psychosocial distress, and spiritual distress (https://lungcancer.net/treatment/supportive-palliative-care). Hospice care, however, is referred to as end-of-life care that can be utilized when cancer therapies are no longer effective. Hospice care also focuses on improving quality of life rather than treating the disease (https://lungcancer.net/coping/hospice-care). Depending where you are in your treatment journey, palliative or hospice care may be very beneficial for you. You may wish to bring it up to your healthcare team. Thank you again for reaching out. I hope this information was helpful for you! Please know that we are here for you anytime! Best, Christina, LungCancer.net Team

It can be a good idea to think about palliative care and hospice. Palliative care can be an important part of your treatment plan, aiming to alleviate symptoms and maximize the patient's quality of life, focusing on physical symptoms, psychosocial distress, spiritual distress, and caregiver distress to treat the side effects of cancer and treatment. Hospice may be provided to lung cancer patients and their loved ones when cancer therapies are no longer controlling the disease, with the goal of controlling pain and symptoms of lung cancer to allow patients to be as comfortable as possible near the end of life. More information on each is available here: https://lungcancer.net/living/navigating-palliative-care https://lungcancer.net/living/7-things-to-know-about-hospice