8 NOVEMBER - 2022IN MY OPINIONIN MY OPINIONDr. Joseph ShegaThough death is inevitable, suffering is not. And while we each have our own deeply personal wishes for how we hope to spend our final days, the desire to minimize pain is nearly universal, even innate. Perhaps that's why, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization's most recent data, the number of hospice care patients continues to steadily rise, with 1.61 million Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in hospice as of 2019.Simply put, the goal of hospice care is to improve quality of life at the end of life. At this stage, the focus of care shifts from disease-modifying treatments to supportive approaches with a focus on pain-symptom management. Our goal is to neither accelerate nor prolong the dying process, but rather, to consider every tool available to us so that we can provide physical, emotional and spiritual comfort to patients and their families. PHARMACOLOGICAL PAIN MANAGEMENT STRATEGIESPain management is a nuanced and multidimensional therapeutic areathat requires a carefully balanced approach. In patients with advanced illness, there are a variety of pharmacological strategies that hospice care professionals will consider to help keep pain under control. These include topical agents like capsaicin and diclofenac gel; systemic agents such assalicylates and steroids; neurotransmitter analogues like gabapentin; antidepressants such as serotonin By Dr. Joseph Shega, Executive Vice President and Chief Medical Officer,VITAS HealthcareHow Hospice Careis Evolving: Managing End-of-Life Pain with Care, Collaboration and Compassion
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