Palliative treatment is care for and control of your symptoms, rather than the treatment of the disease itself. It may include palliative chemotherapy, radiotherapy or surgery.

Palliative treatments may be used to remove skin nodules (small tumours) caused by the spread of melanoma, to deal with painful nodules in the skin or other sites such as the bone, or to heal skin nodules that have a raw surface (ulceration). Most of the methods used as curative treatment can also be used to help in palliation. The most common are surgery or laser treatment for skin nodules, and radiotherapy for internal nodules (such as those causing bone pain).

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 give good pain and symptom control by other means, including the use of conventional drugs such as corticosteroids for inflammation and morphine for pain.

Supportive care includes care for your emotional and spiritual wellbeing. It involves and supports your family and carers too. This is sometimes called psychosocial support. In its widest sense, supportive care starts with the first tests that you have, and is the concern of all the healthcare professionals that you meet throughout your treatment.

Supportive care aims to help you to live well and have the best possible quality of life, even if your cancer can’t be cured. If this is the case, you may receive specialist palliative care in hospital, at home, 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.