Palliative Management of Anorexia/Cachexia and Associated Symptoms

The focus of palliative care is illness-oriented, with the main aim being to relieve suffering. In contrast, the disease-oriented approach aims to improve the natural course of a disease and the length of life. Caring for nutritional issues of patients with advancing, progressive and terminal illness improves when the nutritional interventions focus on the effects of the illness on patients and relatives, and do not target curative or diseaseoriented endpoints (such as weight, oral intake). This brief chapter highlights the concept of palliative care, issues of palliative nutritional endpoints and decision making, the potential importance of treatment of symptoms and syndromes such as constipation as causes for secondary anorexia/ cachexia, issues of palliative symptom and syndrome management, and terminal care.