• Angela O Suen, Kara Bischoff, Anand S Iyer, Keerthana Radhakrishnan, Cynthia Fenton, Jonathan P Singer, Rebecca L Sudore, Ashwin Kotwal, and Erica Farrand.
• Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine, San Francisco. Electronic address: angela.suen@ucsf.edu.
• Chest. 2024 Aug 24.

BackgroundPatients with lung cancer, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), and COPD have high symptom burden, poor quality of life, and high health care use at the end of life. Although proactive integration of palliative care in lung cancer can improve outcomes, it is unclear whether similar practices have been adopted in COPD and IPF care.Research QuestionDo patients with COPD and IPF have different patterns of health care and palliative care use at the end of life compared with patients with lung cancer?Study Design And MethodsWe retrospectively identified deceased patients with lung cancer, COPD, or IPF with ≥ 1 outpatient visit at the University of California, San Francisco, in the last 6 months of life. We compared outpatient palliative care and opioid prescriptions, inpatient palliative care, hospitalizations, intensive care use, and in-hospital death in the last 6 months of life between each group. We used multivariable logistic regression to calculate adjusted ORs (aORs) of each outcome, with lung cancer as the reference group.ResultsAmong 1,819 patients, patients with COPD and IPF were more likely to be male and older at the time of death compared with patients with lung cancer. Compared with patients with lung cancer, patients with COPD and IPF showed a lower adjusted odds (P < .001) of receiving outpatient palliative care (COPD: aOR, 0.26 [95% CI, 0.19-0.36]; IPF: aOR, 0.48 [95% CI, 0.32-0.70;), outpatient opioids (COPD: aOR, 0.50 [95% CI, 0.40-0.63]; IPF: aOR, 0.40 [95% CI, 0.29-0.54]), and a higher odds of end-of-life ICU use (COPD: aOR, 2.88 [95% CI, 2.11-3.93]; IPF: aOR, 4.15 [95% CI, 2.66-6.49]). Patients with IPF showed higher odds of receiving inpatient palliative care (aOR: 2.02 [95% CI, 1.30-3.13]; P = .002).InterpretationPatients with COPD and IPF are less likely to receive outpatient palliative care and opioid prescriptions and are more likely to use end-of-life intensive care than patients with lung cancer. Further research should explore health system barriers contributing to differences in care patterns to optimize quality of life and to align with patient goals of care.Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.

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