Palliative
Treatment aimed at relieving symptoms and improving quality of life rather than curing the disease. Not the same as end-of-life care: palliative treatments are given alongside anticancer drugs at every stage.
In oncology, 'palliative intent' describes treatment for a cancer that cannot be cured, where the aim is to shrink or slow it to relieve pain, breathlessness or obstruction and to extend life with good function; palliative radiotherapy to a painful bone metastasis is a textbook example. Palliative care as a specialty manages pain, nausea, fatigue and distress, and trials have shown that involving it early, from diagnosis of advanced cancer, improves quality of life and mood and may lengthen survival. Most systemic therapy for stage IV solid tumours is palliative in intent, which is why quality of life and toxicity matter so much in judging it.