Journal of pain and symptom management
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Apr 2022
Multicenter StudyChallenges and strategies regarding sedation at the end of life in hospitals and nursing homes.
Sedation is an accepted, but controversially discussed and challenging measure to treat suffering at the end of life. Although most people die in hospitals or nursing homes, little is known how professionals in these settings deal with sedatives and sedation at the end of life. ⋯ To meet the identified challenges in a sustainable way and enable continuous improvement of quality of care, best practice recommendations, and other supportive measures have to address all identified levels of challenges.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Feb 2022
Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter StudyAcupuncture for Quality of Life in Gastric Cancer Patients Undergoing Adjuvant Chemotherapy.
Patients with gastric cancer experience health-related quality of life (HRQOL) decline during adjuvant chemotherapy following gastrectomy. ⋯ EA showed promising effects in improving HRQOL, controlling symptom burden, and reducing toxicity during adjuvant chemotherapy in gastric cancer patients. Future adequately powered trials are feasible and needed to confirm the specific effect of EA.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Jan 2022
Multicenter Study Pragmatic Clinical TrialNatural Language Processing to Identify Advance Care Planning Documentation in a Multisite Pragmatic Clinical Trial.
Large multisite clinical trials studying decision-making when facing serious illness require an efficient method for abstraction of advance care planning (ACP) documentation from clinical text documents. However, the current gold standard method of manual chart review is time-consuming and unreliable. ⋯ NLP is more efficient and as accurate as manual chart review for identifying ACP documentation in studies with large patient cohorts.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Nov 2021
Multicenter StudyDevelopment of a One-item Screening Question to Assess Spiritual Well-Being for Advanced Cancer Inpatients in Korea.
Spiritual well-being (SWB) is significant for patients with life-limiting illnesses. Thus, shortened versions of questions would be helpful in approaching SWB. ⋯ Self-rated spirituality and religiosity showed better convergence validity than feeling at peace. Therefore, we recommend self-rated spirituality or religiosity as a one-item question for screening SWB in inpatients with advanced cancer.
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J Pain Symptom Manage · Nov 2021
Multicenter Study Observational StudyOptimal paracentesis volume for terminally ill cancer patients with ascites.
Patients with malignant ascites often suffer from distressing symptoms, especially in their end-of-life stage. Although paracentesis is the most common treatment modality to alleviate such symptoms, the optimal volume of paracentesis is not known. ⋯ Even small-volume paracentesis could alleviate abdominal distension of terminally ill cancer patients with malignant ascites without shortening the paracentesis interval compared with moderate-volume paracentesis. Small-volume paracentesis was a well-balanced treatment for these patients.