Journal of pain and symptom management
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Oct 2014
Multicenter StudySubgroups of cancer patients with unique pain and fatigue experiences during chemotherapy.
Some cancer patients experience pain and fatigue, whereas others experience only one of the two symptoms. Yet, it is not clear who experiences these unique patterns and why. ⋯ This study confirmed the existence of a unique symptom experience of pain and fatigue. This pattern should be acknowledged for symptom assessment and management.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Oct 2014
Development and validation of the breakthrough pain assessment tool (BAT) in cancer patients.
The successful management of breakthrough pain depends on a combination of adequate assessment, appropriate (individualized) treatment, and adequate re-assessment. Currently, there is no fully validated clinical assessment tool for breakthrough pain in cancer patients. ⋯ This study provides initial evidence for the validity and reliability of the breakthrough pain assessment tool which may be used to facilitate the management of patients with breakthrough cancer pain in the clinical setting.
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Palliative care services have been reported to be a less expensive alternative to traditional treatment; however, little is known about how to measure the cost of delivering quality palliative care. ⋯ A standardized methodology and framework for costing palliative care are presented. The framework allows a country or provider of care to substitute their own local costs to generate cost information relevant to the health-care system. In Romania, this allowed the palliative care provider community to advocate for a consistent payment system.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Oct 2014
Psychometric properties of the Polish version of the Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory-20 in cancer patients.
Multidimensional questionnaires estimating cancer-related fatigue (CRF) as a symptom cluster or a clinical syndrome primarily have been used and validated in English-speaking populations. However, cultural issues and language peculiarities can affect CRF assessment ⋯ The Polish version of the MFI-20 is well accepted by patients, reliable, and a valid instrument to assess CRF in Polish cancer patients.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Oct 2014
Propensity scores: a practical method for assessing treatment effects in pain and symptom management research.
When conducting research on pain and symptom management interventions for seriously ill individuals, randomized controlled trials are not always feasible or ethical to conduct. Secondary analyses of observational data sets that include information on treatments experienced and outcomes for individuals who did and did not receive a given treatment can be conducted, but confounding because of selection bias can obscure the treatment effect in which one is interested. Propensity scores provide a way to adjust for observable characteristics that differ between treatment and comparison groups. This article provides conceptual guidance in addition to an empirical example to illustrate two areas of propensity score analysis that often lead to confusion in practice: covariate selection and interpretation of resultant treatment effects.