[Breaking cancer communication to the patient and the family: guidelines].

The present paper aims to give some practical suggestions on how to convey the communication of cancer to the patient and his/her family. Guidelines supported by recent international literature are presented. The acronym SPIKES (setting, perception, invitation, knowledge, emotions, summary), proposed by Buckman (1992) and afterwards by Baile et al. (2000, 2005), is adopted as outline, adding observations from recent literature. Some commented examples to help the reader are provided.