Incluye referencias bibliográficas

Art of dying / Lawrence Berk -- Dying : what happens in the cells and tissues / Lawrence Berk -- Dying : what happens to the body after death / Vernard Adams -- Quality of life at the end of life / Lodovico Balducci and Miriam Innocenti -- Legal aspects of oncology care for dying patients / Marshall B. Knapp -- Spiritual care : an essential aspect of cancer care / Kenneth J. Doka -- Religious views of the afterlife / Christopher M. Moreman -- A historical perspective of death in the western world / David San Filippo -- Economic aspects of death and dying in oncology / Vlad Dolgopolov -- Oncologists and death / Lawrence Berk -- Pediatric cancer and end-of-life / Kathleen G. Davis -- Symptom management of the dying oncology patient / Lawrence Berk.

This book brings together in one volume many important topics about death and dying, including the pathophysiology of death, the causes of death among cancer patients, the ethics of death, the legal aspects of death for the physician and for the patient and caregivers, the economics of death, the medical management of the dying patient, including pain and dyspnea, the prediction of death, and the spiritual management of the dying patient. It also discusses other medical and humanistic aspects of death and dying, such as the historical definition of death and various cultures' and religions' viewpoints on death and the afterlife. Everybody, including every patient with cancer, will die, and every physician will have to assist dying patients. Oncologists face this prospect more often than many physicians. And yet to date there has been no comprehensive textbook on Thanatology, the academic discipline studying death and dying, to assist oncologists in this difficult task. This book will help the physician to understand his or her own relationship with death and to communicate about death and dying with the patient and the patient's caregivers.