Surgery and palliative medicine: new horizons

Abstract

Despite important early contributions by individual surgeons to the hospice movement, the recent relationship between palliative medicine and surgery has been distant. The paucity of contributions from the surgical literature on palliative care and the lack of familiarity with surgical illness by palliative care practitioners signals a lack of preparation necessary to address many of the issues presented by chronic, incurable surgical illnesses. Remediation of this problem is possible through a planned, sequential program of interdisciplinary effort.