The World Health Organization defines palliative
care as “an approach that improves the
quality of life of patients and their families
facing the problems associated with life-threatening
illness, through the prevention and relief
of suffering by means of early identification
and impeccable assessment and treatment of
pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial
and spiritual.”9 Palliative care, which is essential
regardless of whether a medical condition
is acute or chronic and whether it is in an early
or a late stage, can also extend beyond the patient’s
death to bereaved family members10
(Fig. 1).