Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer
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Support Care Cancer · Mar 2012
Variations in process and outcome in inpatient palliative care services in Korea.
Hospice programs in Korea have been largely based on volunteer activity, religious services, or social services. Recent government policy of designating medically based inpatient palliative care services and per diem payment system made it necessary to monitor the quality of these services. We examined the variation in the process and outcomes of palliative care services, using 2009 data obtained from the Korean Terminal Cancer Patient Information System. ⋯ We found considerable variations among palliative care services with regard to the mean length of stay, subsequent place of care, and change in average pain score. Continued assessment of the variations in process and outcomes will assist in developing the national benchmarking system and the evaluation of the government policy.
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Support Care Cancer · Mar 2012
Comparative StudyComparison of pain response and functional interference outcomes between spinal and non-spinal bone metastases treated with palliative radiotherapy.
The purpose of this study was to compare functional interference and pain response outcomes using the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) for patients treated with palliative radiotherapy to spine versus non-spine bones and determine if dose fractionation was associated with each group's respective response. ⋯ Spine and non-spine bone metastases exhibited similar pain and functional interference improvements over a period of 6 months post-radiotherapy. There were, however, high attrition rates as expected with palliative studies, with approximately half the patients remaining in this study by 3 months and a fifth by 6 months. A single 8 Gy resulted in equal benefits in terms of both pain response and improvement in function.
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Support Care Cancer · Mar 2012
A mono-institutional prospective study on the effectiveness of a specialist psychotherapeutic intervention (POI) started at the diagnosis of cancer.
We evaluated the effectiveness of an early POI in newly diagnosed cancer patients in reducing the occurrence of psychiatric disturbances. ⋯ Considering all the limits of our study, we may conclude that an early POI significantly reduces patients' psychiatric symptoms and the risk of a negative evolution of pathological situations in those patients who are motivated and express a need for psychological help.
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Support Care Cancer · Mar 2012
Relationships between the characteristics of oncohematology services providing palliative care and the sociodemographic characteristics of caregivers using health indicators: social support, perceived stress, coping strategies, and quality of work life.
The aim of this study was to analyze the relationships between the characteristics of the management of oncohematology services and the psychosocial determinants of caregivers' health at work including social support, stress, and coping strategies. ⋯ To our knowledge, it is the first study showing a relationship between participative management (including multidisciplinary staffs, approach with a service project, and internal training) and the quality of work life in the domain of health care. The implementation of this model should be promoted in health care services.
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Support Care Cancer · Feb 2012
Controlled Clinical TrialManaging chronic pain: results from an open-label study using MC5-A Calmare® device.
Despite state-of-the-art therapeutic strategies for pain, some types of chronic pain remain difficult to treat. We evaluated the effectiveness of an innovative neuromodulative approach to the treatment of chronic pain using electrical stimulus integrated with pharmacological support. ⋯ Our preliminary results suggest that cutaneous electrostimulation with the MC5-A Calmare© can be hypothesized as part of a multimodality approach to the treatment of chronic pain. Further studies on larger numbers of patients are needed to assess its efficacy, to quantify the effects of inter-operator variability, and to compare results obtained from the active device versus those from a sham machine.