Palliative Care and Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension

In other diseases, palliative care is associated with better quality of life, symptom management, illness understanding, and reduced caregiver burden. This study looked at when palliative care specialty teams should be brought in as an adjunct to ongoing disease-directed care for pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH).

They suggest that PAH clinicians educate patients about palliative care's role and refer all patients in a "high risk" category to the palliative care team. This provides an opportunity to facilitate living as well as possible through symptom management and coping support regardless of a patient's disease prognosis or clinical status.

Read the original journal article.