Journal of palliative medicine
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Heart failure is a disease with high morbidity, mortality, and physical and psychological burden. More knowledge about the care provided for patients with heart failure close to death is needed. ⋯ The results indicate inadequate palliative care for patients with heart failure during their last week of life.
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Indicators specific to the African context are important to measure palliative care (PC) development accurately. ⋯ The process to develop African-specific PC indicators resulted in 19 indicators that were used to measure PC development as a comparative baseline for development in African countries.
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Children receiving hospice and palliative care (HPC) differ from adults in important ways. Children are more likely to have rare diagnoses, less likely to have cancer, have longer lengths of stay on hospice, and are more likely to be technology dependent than adults. The National Consensus Project (NCP) in Palliative Care established domains of quality for HPC, but these domains have not been evaluated for applicability in children. ⋯ All eight NCP domains were validated in pediatric HBHPC. A ninth domain, Continuity and Coordination of Care, was also added. Ranking the domains was not recommended as consensus indicated weighting them as equally integrated standards. Future studies are needed to evaluate parent- and patient-prioritized domains of quality in pediatric HBHPC and to validate and map pediatric-specific indicators to these domains.
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While early involvement and integration of palliative care with oncology can positively impact quality of life and survival of patients with advanced cancer, there is a dearth of information regarding this integration in sub-Saharan Africa. ⋯ Despite recognized benefits of palliative collaboration, doctors at the UCI seldom refer patients to palliative care specialists due to limited staffing, cultural barriers, and difficult interservice communication.
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As palliative care (PC) moves upstream in the course of advanced illness, it is critical that PC providers have a broad understanding of curative and palliative treatments for serious diseases. Possessing a working knowledge of radiation therapy (RT), one of the three pillars of cancer care, is crucial to PC providers given RT's role in both the curative and palliative settings. This article provides PC providers with a primer on the vocabulary of RT; the team of people involved in the planning of RT; and common indications, benefits, and side effects of treatment.