The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — At least half of the 550,000 Americans who die of cancer each year suffer pain, depression, trouble breathing or other symptoms, but many get inadequate care for such problems because American medicine has focused so exclusively on curing cancer, a new report charges.
Most cancer patients in the United States today don’t receive medical care that combines freedom to choose the treatments they want with adequate symptom control when their disease becomes advanced, according to the report by the National Cancer Policy Board, an expert committee assembled by the nonprofit Institute of Medicine and National Research Council.
"Nine million Americans, or 3 percent of the population, are living with a diagnosis of cancer," said Kathleen Foley of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a member of the committee that wrote the report. "While we work to cure the many types of cancer, nothing would greater impact the daily lives of cancer patients and their families than good symptom control and supportive therapy."
Limited insurance coverage, inadequate training of health care workers, a lack of standards for treatment of many symptoms, minuscule research funding and a dearth of public information are major barriers to improving care for people whose disease can’t be cured, the report found.
More than half of all dying cancer patients use hospice services, but health insurance programs often force patients to choose between such services or treatments aimed at prolonging their lives, rather than allowing them to receive both. The federal Medicare program covers hospice care only if patients are expected to live less than six months, thereby excluding many others who might benefit from such services.
Many of the problems the report identified in cancer care apply equally to the treatment of people with heart failure, Alzheimer’s disease and other incurable illnesses, experts said Tuesday at a press briefing to release the report, which is titled "Improving Palliative Care for Cancer."
The National Cancer Institute, the agency charged with leading the government’s campaign against cancer, spent less than 1 percent of its 1999 budget of $2.9 billion on research and training related to palliative care, the report found.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
