Role of palliative surgery

The current treatment of patients in a palliative situation is not conceivable without surgery. Improvement and maintenance of the best possible quality of life is the primary goal of palliative surgery. Evidence-based review article regarding the role of surgery in the palliative setting. A systematic search in Pubmed, MEDLINE and a manual search were carried out to review relevant articles published until February 2013. Surgery plays an important role in the palliative setting. Surgery in palliative medicine can be preventive (e.g. palliative bypass procedures for pancreatic cancer), but it mostly plays an important role in acute and emergency settings (e.g. tumour bleeding or perforation of gastric or colorectal cancer). Improvement and maintenance of the best possible quality of life is the primary goal of palliative surgery. This is achieved by various surgical interventions, always depending on the tumour, stage of disease and needs and preferences of the individual patient.