Journal of pain and symptom management
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Aug 2024
Predictive Biomarkers of Dyspnea Response to Dexamethasone and Placebo in Cancer Patients.
In the Alleviating Breathlessness in Cancer Patients with Dexamethasone (ABCD) trial, dexamethasone did not improve dyspnea more than placebo in unselected cancer patients. However, it is unclear if patients with greater inflammation would be more likely to derive a treatment response. ⋯ Cytokines decreased with dexamethasone, but not placebo. Higher baseline cytokine levels may identify patients likely to respond to dexamethasone and less likely to respond to placebo.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Aug 2024
Public Awareness of Palliative Care: A Nationally Representative Sample of Jordanian Adults.
Internationally, studies suggest that inadequate comprehension of the concept of palliative care and misconceptions about it hinder the effective use of palliative care, especially in developing nations. ⋯ The demand for palliative care in Jordan is increasing, requiring increased access, a holistic approach, open discussions, and easily accessible information. Challenges include integrating palliative care into non-malignant progressive diseases, ensuring comprehensive end-of-life care, promoting societal receptiveness towards mortality, enhancing information accessibility, and health promotion efforts. The study's results indicate the importance of implementing educational strategies and engaging families and communities in policymaking to change public knowledge and attitudes toward palliative care.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Aug 2024
Global Assessment of Palliative Care Need: Serious Health-Related Suffering Measurement Methodology.
Inequities and gaps in palliative care access are a serious impediment to health systems especially in low- and middle-income countries and the accurate measurement of need across health conditions is a critical step to understanding and addressing the issue. Serious Health-related Suffering (SHS) is a novel methodology to measure the palliative care need and was originally developed by The Lancet Commission on Global Access to Palliative Care and Pain Relief. In 2015, the first iteration - SHS 1.0 - was estimated at over 61 million people worldwide experiencing at least 6 billion days of SHS annually as a result of life-limiting and life-threatening conditions. ⋯ The methodology encompasses opportunities for applying SHS to future policy making assessment of future research priorities particularly in light of the dearth of data from low- and middle-income countries, and sharing of directions for future work to develop SHS 3.0.
-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Aug 2024
Creating a Palliative Care Clinic for Patients with Cancer Pain and Substance Use Disorder.
Opioids are a first-line treatment for severe cancer pain. However, clinicians may be reluctant to prescribe opioids for patients with concurrent substance use disorders (SUD) or clinical concerns about non-prescribed substance use. ⋯ The formal collaboration with addiction psychiatry and the integration of harm reduction principles and practices into ambulatory palliative care improved our ability to provide treatment to a previously underserved patient population with high symptom burden.