Palliative treatment is care for, and management of, your symptoms. This may include chemotherapy, radiotherapy or surgery.

Some patients are too ill to cope with these powerful treatments, or the cancer is not responding to them. In this case, palliative care (sometimes called supportive care) aims to relieve symptoms such as pain, breathing problems, and weight loss by other means.

There are drugs to kill pain, reduce sickness and give relief from hiccups (caused by a swollen liver pressing on the diaphragm). Steroids can help with loss of appetite and tiredness.

Water tablets (diuretics) and other drugs can relieve swelling (ascites). This is caused by fluid collecting in the abdomen. Alternatively, fluid can be drained off with a tube. This is usually done in hospital with a local anaesthetic.

Surgery may also be used to help relieve jaundice. A small tube (called a stent) is inserted into the bile duct if it is blocked.

Supportive care includes care for your emotional and spiritual wellbeing. This includes advice and support for your family and carers too. In its widest sense, supportive care starts with the first tests that you have, and is the concern of all the health professionals that you meet. Throughout your treatment you should be offered clear information and support in an open and sensitive way.

Supportive care aims to help you to live well and have the best possible quality of life, even if your cancer is beyond treatment. If this is the case, you may receive specialist palliative care at home, in hospital, in a care-home or in a hospice. The pattern of your care will be decided by you and the multidisciplinary team which has looked after you so far, including your GP.

You may be cared for by a hospital-based palliative care team or a ‘hospice at home’ team. Additional palliative care may be given by a Macmillan nurse, your community palliative care team, Marie Curie nurses or your local hospice.