Integrating palliative care with usual care of diabetic foot wounds

Palliative care is a philosophy and a system for deciding care and can be used alone or integrated with usual chronic disease care. Palliative care encompasses end-of-life care. Palliative care aims to enhance quality of life, optimize function and manage symptoms including early in the course of chronic diseases. The purposes of this article are to outline palliative care and discuss how it can be integrated with usual care of diabetic foot wounds. Many people with diabetes who have foot wounds also have other comorbidities and diabetes complications such as cardiovascular and renal disease and depression, which affect medicine and other treatment choices, functional status, surgical risk and quality of life. Two broad of diabetic foot disease exist: those likely to heal but who could still benefit from integrated palliative care such as managing pain and those where healing is unlikely where palliation can be the primary focus. People with diabetes can die suddenly, although the life course is usually long with periods of stable and unstable disease. Many health professionals are reluctant to discuss palliative care or suggest people to document their end-of-life care preferences. If such preferences are not documented, the person might not achieve their desired death or place of death and health professionals and families can be confronted with difficult decisions. Palliative care can be integrated with usual foot care and is associated with improved function, better quality of life and greater
patient and family satisfaction.