Overview

Effective supportive care is vital to reduce symptoms and improve quality of life in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer, especially because of its associated short survival time (Gooden 2013). Current treatment guidelines state that supportive care should be stressed in patients with ECOG performance status of 3 or greater along with poorly controlled comorbid conditions (Sohal et al 2016). Supportive care to support symptom management should be done in a multidisciplinary approach (Laquente et al 2017). There is no standard approach to interventions included in supportive care in clinical trials in patients with cancer where supportive care is a treatment arm (Lee et al 2015). Clinical trials often define the use of supportive therapies as being at the discretion of the treating physician. Generally, there is no standardization of routine physical, psychological, and social assessments, and the most common interventions include analgesics, radiotherapy, blood transfusions, and antibiotics (Lee et al 2015). Management of symptoms with supportive care in patients with pancreatic cancer alleviates symptoms, relieves pain, and preserves quality of life, thereby allowing for the administration of antitumor treatment, possibly improving outcomes (Laquente et al 2017). As part of supportive care in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer, multimodality treatment may lead to improved quality of life, symptomatology, and better outcomes (Lee et al 2015; Dose 2017; Sperti 2015).