When to stop cancer treatment

When you have cancer and you have tried many treatments without success, it can be very hard to know when to stop treatment. Sometimes, even with the best care, cancer continues to spread. It is hard to accept, but the best thing for you at that point may be to stop the cancer treatment. Instead, you could focus on getting care to keep you comfortable and out of pain.

When is it time to think about stopping cancer treatment?

If you have had three different treatments and your cancer has grown or spread, more treatment usually will not help you feel better or increase your chance of living longer. Instead, more treatment could cause serious side effects that shorten your life and reduce the quality of the time you have left.

Palliative care improves your quality of life.

Palliative care is an added layer of support to help you and your loved ones live with cancer. It does not treat your cancer, but it helps reduce your pain and other symptoms. It helps you and your loved ones get the most out of the time you have left together.

With palliative care, you can get physical, emotional, and spiritual support. You can get help to relieve pain, fatigue, anxiety, shortness of breath, nausea, and depression. Sometimes your doctor can provide palliative support. Other times a trained palliative care team works with you and your doctor to provide specialist care and the services you need. For example, palliative radiation may be appropriate even when a non-active treatment approach has been adopted to treat symptoms such as pain. Ask your oncologist or palliative care team if that may be an option for you.

Questions to ask your doctor

Let your doctor know how much additional information you want to know about your cancer, and when you are ready to talk about end-of-life care.

Conditions: Cancer (Malignancy, Tumor), Terminal Illness (Terminally Ill, Terminal Disease), End of Life (Death, Dying).

Treatments: Palliative Care.