Pain and Palliative Care Terms
Pain, symptom relief, supportive care, hospice, and quality-of-life care. Browse definitions and meanings below.
What is palliative care?
Palliative care is specialized care aimed at relieving the symptoms and strain of a serious illness, whatever the diagnosis and whatever the stage. It can begin at diagnosis, run alongside treatment intended to cure, and continue for years. Choosing it does not mean giving up on treatment.
Hospice care is a narrower thing: palliative care for the final stage of an illness, once treatment aimed at cure has stopped. The two words are used interchangeably in ordinary speech, and that confusion leads people to refuse palliative care that could have helped them for years.
Terms in this topic
Alphabetical order-
Known as paracetamol outside the United States, and present in so many combination products that a total intake is easy to lose track of.
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A specific spot on the body where an acupuncture needle may be inserted to control pain and other symptoms.
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The acupuncture map without the needles, applied by thumb or elastic wristband, and studied most seriously as a way of settling sickness.
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The traditional explanation and the modern one differ sharply, yet both describe the same act of placing needles at fixed points.
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A specific spot on the body where an acupuncture needle may be inserted to control pain and other symptoms.
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A procedure in which mild electric currents are applied to certain acupuncture points (spots on the body where an acupuncture needle may be inserted to control pain and other symptoms) on the skin.
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The title carries no single meaning worldwide, since what an acupuncturist may train in, assess or treat is decided locally.
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Pain with a clear beginning and a clear cause, which fades as the injury behind it heals.
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Two familiar painkillers are not interchangeable, since only one of them settles swelling and only one of them troubles the stomach.
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Better known today for nerve pain, migraine and sleep than for depression, this older antidepressant acts on a wide range of receptors.
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A drug that is used to treat depression and may be given to treat anxiety, sleep disorders, and pain.
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Pain can be dulled while touch, movement and awareness stay intact, which is what separates it from being put under.
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The classes act at different points along the pain pathway, which is why one may help where another does nothing.
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Much of the work is not putting a person to sleep but keeping breathing, circulation and body chemistry steady while the surgery proceeds.
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A missing letter rather than a different symptom: the same joint pain, spelled the way it is often typed and rarely corrected.
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How many joints hurt, whether they match on both sides, and how long morning stiffness lasts sort the causes faster than the pain itself.
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A disease that causes inflammation and pain in the joints.
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Aspirin is a widely used medication that relieves pain and fever, reduces inflammation, and inhibits platelet clumping to limit blood clot formation.
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Most of the fall in blood cholesterol comes not from making less but from the liver clearing more of it out of the circulation.
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Short term relief that teaches itself: stepping away eases the fear at once, and that immediate ease keeps the pattern running.