History
In 1998, one of the first palliative care wards in Berlin was founded at the Charité Campus Virchow-Klinikum, heralding the development of comprehensive palliative care services at Charité. The Oncological Palliative Care Center of Charité (Palliativmedizinisches Zentrum der Charité) now spans all the three Charité sites and rests on the three pillars of palliative care wards, hospital palliative care support teams and outpatient palliative care clinics.
Profile
Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin is one of the largest university hospitals in Europe. Patients treated at the Charité Comprehensive Cancer Center (CCCC) benefit from the close integration of clinical and translational research. This enables CCCC to offer the most up-to-date treatment methods available. A multi-professional and interdisciplinary team of palliative care specialists provides palliative care within the CCCC.
Palliative and Supportive Care
In our understanding, palliative care for cancer patients expands from the traditional focus on end-of-life care to an extended care model in which palliative care is integrated into standard oncologic therapy throughout the course of a life-threatening cancer.
This means that from diagnosis and treatment planning, to the delivery and completion of treatment, patients receive the care and support of an interdisciplinary team of specialists including palliative care experts. Psycho-oncology and social support play an integral role at any stage of treatment.
Treatment planning is done on a case-by-case basis, which, depending on the individual patient’s needs, may include surgery, radiation therapy, and/or drug-based treatment, and multi-professional palliative care alongside anti-tumor treatment. Especially in the case of patients with advanced disease, when causal cancer-directed therapy is no longer possible, treatment plans focus on any palliative care needs.
Last update: August 2023
