Patients with advanced cancer often continue to choose aggressive interventions and/or treatments up until the final stages of life. This clinical approach may compromise the preservation of a patient¿s quality of life, and secondarily, contributes to higher healthcare costs. Therefore, the ethics of enrolling terminal cancer patients in clinical trials which are testing new, aggressive chemotherapy agents requires careful discussion between the Oncology and the Palliative Care team. We present the case of a patient with stomach cancer admitted to a clinical trial at a very advanced stage of her disease. A number of clinical and ethical difficulties encountered by the PC team are discussed as well as possible solutions

ICS A significant number of patients were evaluated, many of them with severe symptoms and/or at the end of life. Inpatients receiving care from the PCCT experienced an improvement in symptom control within just a few days..

Palliative care is generally understood on caring for terminal patients in chronic settings but more recently these units are developing also in acute care settings or university hospitals as consultants teams. We report the case of a complex patient with rectal adenocarcinoma and four problems of difficult approach: uncontrolled neuropathic pain despite opioids treatment, systemic infection, depression with intense demoralisation and open surgery wound. We show the measures adopted and how an excellent inter-departmental collaboration under the co-ordination of palliative medicine consultant team helped to resolve the untenable situation.