Treatment Recommendations for Respiratory Symptoms in Cancer Patients: Clinical Guidelines from the Japanese Society for Palliative Medicine.
Respiratory symptoms, dyspnea, cough, and death rattle, are common and distressing in advanced cancer patients. Palliation of respiratory symptoms is important to improve quality of life in cancer patients and their families/caregivers. Currently published clinical guidelines for the management of these respiratory symptoms in cancer patients did not cover the topics comprehensively or were not based on formal process for the development of clinical guidelines.



The Japanese Society for Palliative Medicine (JSPM) decided to develop comprehensive clinical guidelines for the management of respiratory symptoms in cancer patients following the formal guideline developing process.



This article provides a summary of the recommendations with the rationales, as well as a short summary of the developing process, of the JSPM respiratory symptom management guidelines. We established 26 recommendations and all recommendations are based on the best available evidences and expert consensus.



More future clinical researches and continuous guideline updates are required to improve the quality of respiratory symptom management in cancer patients.
1 Department of Palliative Medicine, Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine , Kobe, Japan .
Takashi
T
Yamaguchi
2 Department of Respiratory Medicine, Kinki Central Hospital , Itami, Japan .
Sho
S
Goya
3 Department of Palliative Medicine, Hiroshima Prefectural Hospital , Hiroshima, Japan .
Hiroyuki
H
Kohara
4 Department of Palliative Medicine, Komaki Municipal Hospital , Komaki, Japan .
Hiroaki
H
Watanabe
5 Department of Palliative Medicine, Seirei Hamamatsu General Hospital , Hamamatsu, Japan .
Masanori
M
Mori
6 Department of Psycho-somatic Medicine, Kinki-Chuo Chest Medical Center , Sakai, Japan .
Yoshinobu
Y
Matsuda
7 Department of Surgery, Toho University Ohashi Medical Center , Tokyo, Japan .
Yoichi
Y
Nakamura
8 Department of Palliative Care, Hyogo Prefectural Kakogawa Medical Center , Kakogawa, Japan .
Akihiro
A
Sakashita
9 Department of Medical Oncology, Kawasaki Municipal Ida Hospital , Kawasaki, Japan .
Tomohiro
T
Nishi
10 Department of Palliative Care, Tokyo Metropolitan Komagome Hospital , Tokyo, Japan .
Keiko
K
Tanaka
D032921:Consensus; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms; D010166:Palliative Care; D065126:Palliative Medicine; D011788:Quality of Life