Palliative care is defined as comprehensive, interdisciplinary care of patients and families facing a terminal illness, focusing primarily on comfort and support. 1 Key aspects include meticulous symptom control; psychosocial and spiritual care; a personalised management plan that maximises patient-determined quality of life; family oriented care that extends through the time of bereavement; and delivery of coordinated services, especially in the home but also in hospital, extended care facilities, day care centres, and specialised units.In this article I introduce current concepts about palliative care and review advances in this subject over the past five years, highlighting developments of particular interest to generalists. MethodsMy choice of topics derives from my familiarity with patterns of medical practice, particularly in the United States; presentations at meetings; review of current textbooks; and monitoring of general medical journals, selected specialty journals on pain and cancer, and nine palliative care journals (see extra box on the BMJ 's website).
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J. Andrew Billings (2000) studied this question.