[Symptom relief in terminal illness].

It is the goal of palliative care to provide as large a relief of the disease symptoms as possible for patients, who are incurably sick, in order to improve the quality of the remaining life. Some of the symptoms can hardly be treated; others like pain, dyspnea, gastrointestinal complaints or sweating can usually be well alleviated. The condition for this is a careful evaluation of the clinical status before the treatment, in order to reach symptom relief by purposeful actions without new side effects.