Diet and Nutrition in Palliative Care

Description

Optimal terminal and palliative care requires consideration of the patient and family unit as well as cultural and religious sensitivities. The patient’s well being in terms of mobility, anxiety, stress, social interaction, and pain control needs expert focus and attention. Furthermore, there is an increasing awareness that diet and nutritional support plays an integral part of the patient’s holistic well being. The interface between nutritional, emotional, cultural, and medicinal support challenges terminal and palliative care providers to recognize the right thing to do, often in the face of considerable uncertainty.

Currently, there is no comprehensive book on nutrition in terminal or palliative care that is suitable for novices and experts alike. The Handbook of Nutrition and Diet in Palliative Care addresses this deficiency in the literature. Designed for doctors, nurses, caregivers, and those working within the palliative or end of life domain, each chapter contains sections on applications to other areas of terminal or palliative care, practical methods and techniques, guidelines, key points and ethical issues. The book is divided into six sections:

• Setting the Scene
• Cultural Aspects
• General Aspects
• Cancer
• Non-Cancer Conditions
• Pharmacological Aspects

Despite the complexity of the correlation between diet and disease, there is now a sufficient body of evidence to encourage applying nutritional science in everyday clinical practice. Increasingly, a strong interest and up-to-date knowledge and understanding of scientific studies on nutrition enables clinicians to help patients under their care more effectively at every stage of their illness. In response to this need, this handbook presents important information on the holistic use of nutrition and diet therapy in palliative care.

Contents

SETTING THE SCENE

• Definition, goal, purposes
  V.R. Preedy
• Enlightening the need for a specialized interest in food and nutrition in palliative care
  Defining palliative, end of life and terminal care
  Religion faith and end-of-life decisions
  H-H Bulow
• Pain control and sedation at the end of life
  N.J. Cherny
• The Nurse and end-of-life decisions
  A. J. E. De Veer
• Sedation in palliative care and its impact on nutrition
  K.C.P. Vissers

CULTURAL ASPECTS

• Nutrition in palliative care: Western perspectives
  M.P. Fuhrman
• Nutrition in palliative care: Japanese perspectives
  T. Morita
• Nutritional support in palliative care: Chinese perspectives
  W.-Y. Hu
• Cultural aspects of forgoing of tube feeding in dying American and Chinese patients
  S.M.C. Pang

GENERAL ASPECTS

• Gastrointestinal side effects in tumor therapy: Implications for nutrition
  F. Mayer
• Support for hydration at end of life
  R.L. Fainsinger
• Palliative treatment of dysphagia
  C.P. Selinger
• Artificial nutrition, advance directives and end of life in nursing homes
  C.A. Monturo
• Home nutritional support in end of life
  S. Antoun
• Preparing hospice families for home: diet and nutritional aspects
  K. A. Kehl
• Fatigue in hospice cancer patients: what nutritional variables does it correlate with
  Y.-H. Lai
• Hospice patients and help in mouth care and eating and drinking
  J.e. Munn
• Drugs and constipation in hospice patients
  D. Weschules

CANCER

• Vitamin deficiency in patients with terminal cancer
  D. J. Harrington
• Total parenteral nutrition in life-limiting cancer
  A.P. Abernethy
• Incurable cancers and home total parenteral nutrition
  A. Jatoi
• Nutritional aspects of palliative in head and neck cancer
  N.E. Goldstein
• Nutrition and palliative care in End of Life Ovarian Cancer
  L.J. Herrinton
• The relationship between nutrition and quality of life in palliative care of cancer
  C. Pichard
• Nutrition and palliative total pharyngo-Iaryngo-esophagectomy
  T. Shinozaki
• Nutrition and euteral stenting in palliative of cancer
  P. Fockens

DEMENTIA

• Feeding in advanced dementia: a palliative approach
  A.E. Volandes
• Nutritional therapy in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
  K. Kollewe

OTHER CONDITIONS

• Nutrition in the palliative care of surgical patients
  G.P. Dunn
• Nutritional support in the vegetative state
  M. Luchetti
• Nutrition and palliation in chronic wounds
  O.M. Alvarez
• Nutritional support in the palliative care of adult BIV/AIDS patients
  D.J. Wantland
• Nutrition and palliative care of children with BIV/AIDS
  A.J. De Baets
• Antioxidants in palliative care and drug induced osteoporosis
  S.N. Chavan
• Nutrition and terminal renal failure
  J. Dotsch

WITHHOLDING NUTRITIONAL SUPPORT

• Withholding nutritional support: what is the process
  M. Hynninen
• Withholding nutritional support in the ICU
  M. Heaney
• Comparisons of withholding support in Six European Countries
  H.M. Buiting

Author Bio

Professor Victor R. Preedy is the Director of the Genomics Centre in the department of Nutrition and Dietetics at King’s College in London.