Correspondence (letter to the editor): Palliative Treatment and Palliative Care

I think there are substantial problems with the description of the therapeutic options in palliative settings on the final page of the article. Palliative therapy and palliative care are often confused, and that is the case for this article. In order to avoid the distinction, which is obviously either not known or too difficult or not desired, the wording used is that of “palliative situations.” If palliative medical ideas are indeed concealed in such “palliative situations,” the fundamental principles of palliative care are conspicuously absent. To focus only on interventional procedures (such as pleural puncture, pleurodesis, or endoscopic procedures) does not do justice to palliative care in any shape or form. This is regrettable-and more so, because a large proportion of patients with carcinoma of the bronchus dies from their tumor and palliative care approaches should be used in this setting.

The authors do not mention the benefits of rehabilitation measures at all. Prevention, however, is mentioned. If the authors had actually conducted a comprehensive literature search, such as was done in setting out the S3 guideline for Germany, they would have discovered that rehabilitation measures-for example, an aerobic endurance training program-are extremely suitable for improving patients’ performance in the shortest time, and thus improving their quality of life to a measurable degree. This means that two crucial strategies in the management of lung cancer patients were omitted.