Journal of pain and symptom management
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2011
Palliative care needs and symptom patterns of hospitalized elders referred for consultation.
To provide effective palliative care (PC) to the geriatric population, an understanding of the reasons for consultation, main diagnoses related to referral, and symptom severity in chronic disease states is essential. ⋯ Older adults in need of PC appear to have symptom burdens and consultation referral patterns that are different from those of younger patients. Further research is needed to determine whether these symptom patterns are caused by psychosocial factors, whether these reflect true differences among age groups, and whether symptom measurement instruments should be tailored to patient age.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Sep 2011
Assessing agreement between terminally ill cancer patients' reports of their quality of life and family caregiver and palliative care physician proxy ratings.
Proxy ratings, if valid, may provide an alternative approach to evaluating patient quality of life (QoL) at the end of life. ⋯ The findings suggest that moderate agreement between patient and proxy ratings of QoL develops over time but that precision at the individual level, which is more clinically relevant, is less reliable. New strategies for improving proxy reliability are needed.