Chapter 5 - Palliative symptom and disease management

Abstract

Veterinary palliative medicine is not a formal field of study currently. It took years for human medicine to create and then accept a field of study that helped people at the end of their life. The gap between a terminal diagnosis and euthanasia currently exists for many animals and people who love them and the field of veterinary palliative medicine could be expanded to fill this gap. This chapter examines the specific symptom and disease management for end-of-life veterinary patients or for patients with advanced, progressive chronic disease.