Oncology for Palliative Medicine

This book provides an overview of oncology for the palliative care professional. It focuses on the issues related to the advanced stages of malignancy and problems related to recurrent malignancy. It describes the main primary sites of cancer, describing the disease and patterns of progression together with the common approaches to treatment. There is an emphasis on the problems of recurrent and advanced cancer, the pathophysiology of symptoms and the key factors influencing treatment decisions. Surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy are discussed. There is also a chapter that considers the management of cancer when the primary site is unknown.