Dear experts in cancer cachexia, dear leaders of societies involved in nutritional aspects of cancer, we cordially invite you to consider a contribution to the work of the EU-Consortium “European Palliative Care Research Collaborative (EPCRC)” on clinical practice guidelines for cachexia in cancer patients.

The European Palliative Care Research Collaborative (EPCRC) on improved treatment of pain, depression and fatigue through translational research consists of eight participating centres from six European countries (UK, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and Norway). The collaborative receives EU funding for a 3 year period to cover the following aims:

1) To identify genes and genetic variation relevant for inter-individual variation in opioid responses and genetic variation that may identify patients at particular risk for developing cachexia.
2) To improve classification and assessment of pain, depression and cachexia by computer assisted approaches.
3) To combine the new knowledge of symptoms, genomics and assessment in an internet-based system for implementation of European evidence-based guidelines and
4) To develop a long lasting European Collaborative in palliative care cancer research.

Specific workpackages cover genetic markers, assessment and classification of cachexia as well as clinical practice guidelines on cachexia.

As leader of the workpackage on clinical practice guidelines we would like to ask you to support of our work in the next months and years.
This workpackage will draft guidelines, review drug treatment of cachexia and evaluate treatment decisions such as withdrawing or withholding cachexia treatment. Your input would be required to review the key questions covering the scope of the guidelines, critically comment the guidelines draft and participate in the discussion on treatment decisions. Part of this work will be done in two Delphi consensus procedures, one in the second half of this year and the other in 2009.

You can find more information on the homepage of this project: www.epcrc.org.
The workpackage on clinical practice guidelines has developed a list of key questions, please follow this link: http://www.epcrc.org/publication_listfiles.php?id=JNYETvM7UtG1bZBvr9Cq

You can also find this list on the EPCRC-homepage under the menu: Project Documents/ Guidelines cachexia.

We would appreciate to receive your feedback. Do these questions cover the scope that a clinical practice guideline on cachexia in advanced cancer has to cover?

For any kind of feedback or questions please send an email to: ptrottenberg@ukaachen.de

Best wishes

Lukas Radbruch
(Workpackage Clinical Guidelines)