Editorial: Early palliative care for cancer patients

In the past, oncological palliative care (PC) had been identified as “end-of-life palliative care” (EoLPC), and EoLPC always began by carrying out a prognostic evaluation of life expectancy when antitumor therapies had been exhausted. In recent years, however, this approach has been modified, giving way to a process of PC based on needs, not only at the end of life, and not only after having withdrawn all antineoplastic treatments. This nonEoLPC process has been variously identified as early palliative care (EPC), simultaneous palliative care (SPC), or timely palliative care (TPC) (1–3). EPC is generally delivered together with anticancer therapies, while EoLPC represents the unique treatment delivered at that end of the disease trajectory.