Do you know how many patients are newly diagnosed with lung cancer in the mainland every year? Nearly 800,000!
Among these newly diagnosed lung cancer patients, less than 1/3 are still in the early stage of the disease, and the remaining 2/3 have already entered the stage of disease development, or even reached the advanced stage.
Because patients have missed the best opportunity for surgery, cancer cells have multiple near or distant tissues and organ metastases, and patients can only control treatment through drugs, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
But even so, the patient's condition may not be able to get full control, clinically most of the advanced lung cancer patients, even if they receive formal treatment, the condition is still slowly and continuously developing, and eventually to the end of the disease, various complications to find themselves, even high fever does not recede, bleeding convulsions, coma, etc., the death knell also rings.
In mainland clinical practice, there are many terminal lung cancer patients, the condition has reached the final stage, the family is still asking doctors to treat the cancer cells in the patient's body, and even when the patient enters the terminal stage, the family is still begging the doctor for end-of-life rescue. Do not hesitate to bear debts and ruin the family to treat diseases!
In fact, this point is very easy to understand from the perspective of family affection and morality, after all, everyone can not accept the arrival of death, in the face of the imminent death of relatives, the first thing that everyone thinks of is to prolong the life of the patient at all costs, even if it is only for a few days, you can also let yourself and the patient have no regrets.
However, does the treatment and end-of-life rescue of lung cancer really make sense?
First of all, let alone the end stage of cancer, even if it has entered the advanced stage, the purpose of clinical cancer treatment has actually changed, from clinical cure to prolonging the life of patients as much as possible and improving the quality of life.
It should be known that patients with advanced cancer need to face various uncomfortable symptoms, especially cancer pain torments patients all the time, after lung cancer and bone metastasis, pain is even more difficult to control, even in the few hours before the patient's death, the pain did not let go of the patient;
In the clinical view, the excessive pursuit of cancer cure at the end of the cancer, the continuous aggravation of drug use, and excessive medical treatment, in fact, are meaningless, and blindly pursuing a cure is likely to be counterproductive, not only causing greater pain to patients, but even may accelerate patient death. Therefore, for patients with terminal cancer, the significance of treatment is more in how to alleviate the patient's physical discomfort, how to alleviate and adjust the patient's psychological problems. Here we have to mention a concept: hospice care!
So the question is, what is hospice care and is it for patients to give up treatment?
Hospice is neither a cure for cancer, nor a cure for cancer, nor is it a way for patients to give up treatment and go home to die. Instead, through various palliative therapy methods, alleviate patients' pain and other physical symptoms, use complication prevention methods to improve the overall quality of life of terminal patients, and accompanied by doctors and family members, patients have psychological and spiritual problems, so that patients can face death more calmly.
To sum it up in the simplest words: hospice care is to make the life of cancer patients as dignified as possible. Doctors give adequate drug support to reduce the patient's own pain, the family fully respects the patient, understands the patient's unfulfilled wishes and tries to give satisfaction, improves the patient's quality of life, and allows the patient to leave with dignity.
Write at the end: In the face of terminal cancer, every patient and family member may have different choices, and we cannot comment on which is right and wrong.
However, everyone should also think that death is the end that everyone will eventually face, when a person's condition is irreparable, although excessive medical treatment may prolong the survival period of several days or weeks, it will undoubtedly prolong the pain and suffering of patients. Compared with hospice care, which kind of life is truly liberating from endless pain and torture?