[Palliative care in advanced cancer. A 7-year experience at the Dr. Juan I. Menchaca Civil Hospital of Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico].

We describe 7 years of experience in terminal cancer care provided by a multi-professional palliative care team. A total of 995 persons requested our services during this period. We included 649 patients for whom we had sufficient information for this study. Average age was 58 years; 60.2% patients were female, whereas 39.7% were male. Underlying disease was cervical cancer followed by breast cancer and prostate, etc. The most frequent symptom on admission was pain followed by weakness, loss of weight, anorexia, and emesis (nausea and vomiting). Average stay in the program of patients who died (406) was 67 days with a range of 1-707 days. We compare symptom incidence and model of care with other palliative care and hospice programs in the world. Cost-Benefit and future implementation of similar programs in Mexico is discussed.