Malignant tumors have overtaken cardiovascular diseases to become the first disease that kills Chinese residents. As the “No. 1 killer” of human diseases, the economic burden caused by malignant tumors to the society and families, and the physical trauma and spiritual harm caused to patients and families are obvious to all. The 2012 China Tumor Registry Annual Report released by the National Tumor Registry shows that there are about 3.12 million new cases of tumor in China every year, and the incidence rate of tumor is increasing at the rate of 3%~5% every year. And the cure rate of malignant tumor in China is only 20%~30%. The pain, weakness, nausea, vomiting, malnutrition, edema and breathing difficulty caused by living with tumor accompany the patients every moment and cause great pain to their body and mind. Therefore, how to control these symptoms, reduce patients’ pain, improve their quality of life, and how to choose when medical expenses become a burden for patients and their families are all problems that oncologists must face. This has led to the birth of a clinical discipline, palliative medicine. Do you know palliative medicine? In 2002, the World Health Organization redefined palliative medicine as a clinical discipline that improves the quality of life of patients and their loved ones facing life-threatening illnesses by preventing and relieving physical and psychological suffering through early identification, active assessment, pain management and treatment of other distressing symptoms, including physical, psychosocial and religious (spiritual) distress. The World Health Assembly in Geneva in 2005 proposed strategies for cancer prevention and control: to ensure that anti-cancer treatments are used at a beneficial stage and to prevent misuse of resources; that cancers with high efficacy can benefit by prolonging life; and that most cancer patients need palliative care. In 2005, Hospice Voices, in collaboration with hospice and palliative care societies around the world, established October 8 each year as Hospice and Palliative Care Day. “The World Health Organization (WHO) has thus shifted the focus of its work on oncology from a hospice to a palliative day. As a result, the World Health Organization (WHO) has changed the three tasks of oncology from “tumor prevention, early diagnosis, and early treatment” to “tumor prevention, early diagnosis, comprehensive treatment, and palliative care”, and recommended that developing countries allocate resources for cancer care to “palliative care”. It is also recommended that developing countries should allocate more than 60% of their cancer resources to “palliative care”. Palliative care is not the same as giving up treatment, but rather the goal of treatment is to shift from disease to symptoms; palliative care is not the same as hospice care. For tumor patients, as long as non-radical means are available, they should be counted as the scope of palliative care, including palliative surgery, palliative chemotherapy, palliative radiotherapy and supportive care, etc. Therefore, it requires the joint participation of members of multidisciplinary integrated treatment team. The principles of palliative care are: 1. Relief of pain and other symptoms that cause suffering 2. Affirm life and view death as a normal process. 3. Neither prolong nor promote death. 4. Provide total care and attention to the patient so that he or she can live as actively as possible. 5.Provide a support system for the family to properly care for the patient and properly handle the aftermath. 6.Improve the quality of life, which may have a positive impact on the disease process. 7.Palliative care should be used as early as possible in the early stages of the disease, in combination with radiotherapy and chemotherapy. 8.To understand and deal with all clinical complications needed for investigation and research. Palliative care is divided into three stages: Stage 1: Combination of anti-cancer treatment and palliative care. The treatment targets are cancer patients who can or may be cured radically. This stage of palliative care focuses on relieving symptoms caused by cancer and anti-cancer treatment, symptomatic supportive treatment, and ensuring patients’ quality of life during the treatment period. Stage 2: When anti-cancer treatment may no longer be beneficial, palliative treatment should be the main treatment. The treatment targets are cancer patients who cannot be cured. The main task of palliative treatment in this stage is to relieve symptoms, alleviate pain and improve quality of life. Stage 3: Hospice care treatment and hospice services are provided for patients with end-stage cancer whose expected survival is only a few weeks to a few days. “Medicine is not just medicine in a bottle”, medicine is a human art, medicine is a benevolent art. For a patient, doctors should first focus on the “person”, including the person’s psychological feelings about his or her disease, the torture his or her body is undergoing, and his or her spiritual needs that are different from those of ordinary people, rather than seeing him or her as a mere “carrier of tumors”. For oncology patients, it is their right to relieve pain and improve their quality of life. We hope that through the continuous efforts and practice of oncologists, more patients can be free from the torture of “cancer”.