Start palliative care earlier, advise experts

According to experts from three Belgian universities, palliative care should be provided earlier on in a patient’s disease process. Professors from the universities of Brussels (VUB), Leuven and Ghent presented the advice to policymakers at a congress last week at KVS in Brussels.

“In comparison with other countries, palliative care starts too late in Belgium,” professor Joachim Cohen of VUB told Het Nieuwsblad. His colleague Luc Deliens, chair of the VUB and UGent research group Care at the End of Life, agreed: “Taking action 10 days before death is just crisis intervention,” he said.

Deliens said that palliative care in Belgium was too often seen as assistance in the dying process, when it should focus on improving the patient’s quality of life. “That concerns the battling of pain, sleeplessness and often psychological complaints,” he said.

According to Deliens, researchers from the US have demonstrated that palliative care can prolong a patient’s life if provided early enough. In the US, on average, half of terminally ill cancer patients receive palliative care at least 42 days before their death.

State secretary Elke Sleurs is examining the possibility of extending the definition of palliative care. The current law refers only to life-threatening diseases but Sleurs is considering including chronic, serious but not immediately life-threatening diseases.

Photo: IngImage