Oral care for hospice patients with advanced cancer.

Mouth care forms an integral part of palliative care for hospice patients with advanced cancer. Oral disease is common in these patients and dental surgeons and their staff will be involved increasingly in the multidisciplinary care essential to effective palliative medicine. This article describes some of the more common problems the dental practitioner caring for these patients is likely to encounter and summarizes appropriate treatments, based on an approach that has been evolved in a Scottish hospice over the last 2 years.