Palliative Care and Symptom-Based Management in Decompensated Cirrhosis

Publication Date: January 31, 2022

Last Updated: May 2, 2022

Guidance Statements

Palliative care can be provided to patients with DC at any stage of their illness.
Palliative care can be delivered by any member of the care team ( primary palliative care) as well as teams with subspecialty training (specialty palliative care) for more-complex cases.
Palliative care does not preclude the delivery of disease-directed or even curative treatments.
Hospice is different than palliative care in that it focuses exclusively on comfort, rather than disease-directed curative treatment, and includes only persons with life expectancy measured in months.