An overview of palliative care in cancer and AIDS.

Many patients with cancer or AIDS present with pain and multiple other physical and psychological symptoms. For patients with advanced cancer or AIDS, the symptoms are truly the disease and should be the basis for the therapeutic plan. This requires maintaining an active problemsolving approach, giving particular attention to major clinical problems (eg, pain control), and instituting early treatment of other symptoms. These problems need management throughout the course of disease, not just in the terminal stages. In incurable disease, management priorities must focus on controlling symptoms.