Letter from the Guest Editors

Abstract

Palliative care for Parkinson's Disease (PD) is an emerging area of interest among clinicians and families. Palliative care for PD can have a significant and positive impact on patients and families, and can improve the quality of life for PD sufferers. This palliative care supplement provides several high quality evidence-based and experience based articles. The article by Hassan and colleagues outlines the issues facing PD patients and families, burdens of care, increasing disability, and declining quality of life for both the patient and caregiver (often an elderly spouse). The Hassan article also offers a snapshot of what PD patents look like ten years into the disease through data from the National Parkinson Foundation's Quality Improvement Initiative. Surprisingly almost all PD patients are living at home after ten years of disease. Next, the principles of palliative care are detailed by Dr. Ghoche who points out that the principles can be applied to our patient population to improve symptom identification, and to enhance quality of life. Caregiver grief is examined by Carter and colleagues with the novel concept of anticipatory grief. Finally, the interdisciplinary model of care for palliative care in PD is presented by Miyasaki et al. and it offers a critical framework for practitioners wishing to integrate palliative medicine into their practices. Our hope is that this supplement will help to influence health policy for PD and for all neurodegenerative illnesses so that there can be international awareness and access to PD palliative care programs.