While I breathe, I hope. Principles of palliative care in chronic breathlessness and advanced lung diseases

Abstract

The ancient Latin quote Dum spiro, spero from Cicero means While I breathe, I hope. This article outlines five clinically relevant principles for pulmonary palliative care to treat chronic breathlessness in advanced lung diseases: (1) be aware of the finality of life, (2) palliative care does not mean “doing nothing”, (3) consider interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary therapeutic concepts, (4) conduct future talks and (5) use opioids for refractory breathlessness and think of treatable causes of respiratory distress.