In palliative care, the nutrition provided has to be tailored to the patient's needs, enhancing patient comfort and quality of life (QoL). We conducted a literature search to review methods of measuring QoL, and modalities of nutritional intervention and their influence on QoL of cancer patients in palliative care. Original papers published in English were selected from PubMed database by using the search terms, palliative medicine, cancer, nutrition and quality of life. Specific tools that are particularly recommended to assess QoL in a palliative care setting are reviewed. The main goal in palliative care is to maintain oral nutrition by providing nutritional counselling. Enteral nutritional support showed inconsistent effects on survival and QoL. An evidence-base for parenteral nutrition is still lacking. Ethical considerations concerning provision of food and hydration in end-of-life care are discussed. Nutritional status should be assessed early and regularly during treatment using appropriate tools. In the particularly acute context of palliative care, optimal patient management requires adequate education and counselling to patients and families. Meaningful interactions between the patient, caregivers and medical team would also increase the chance of resolving nutrition-related issues and help to fulfil each patient's specific nutritional needs and thus improve the QoL.

Aims Oral therapies, including hormone‐based or targeted therapies, have recently taken an increasing place in cancer treatment. In this context, a state of the art of the available studies dealing with the adherence of adult patients to oral anticancer treatment is warranted. The purpose of this review is to address (i) the association between assessment methods and measured adherence, (ii) the putative factors related to adherence and (iii) new ways of improving adherence to oral cancer therapies. Methods We conducted a literature‐based narrative review of studies obtained from Pubmed using medical subject heading terms and free‐text terms combining concepts related to oral anticancer medication and adherence. Results The analysis is based on 48 studies published since 1990, mostly assessing hormone‐based therapy in breast cancer and targeted therapies in chronic myeloid leukaemia. Various methods of adherence were reported including self‐report, medication measurement or combinations of methods. Adherence rates were found to vary from 14% to 100%. Beside patient related‐factors, adherence rate discrepancies were found to be dependent on the method used. Furthermore, there was no consensual definition of adherence even regarding the same methods, some of them tolerating a period of interruption during the treatment period. Finally, several studies addressing persistence found a progressive decrease in adherence with time. Conclusion Adherence to novel oral therapies is a major issue and further research is warranted to standardize adherence assessment in clinical studies better and to define better the most appropriate approaches to improve long term adherence in oncology practice.