Cancer
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Predictors of outcome and rates of successful discharge have not been defined for patients with acute leukemia admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) in the US. ⋯ One of 4 patients with acute leukemia survived an ICU admission to be discharged from the hospital and were alive 2 months later. A diagnosis of acute leukemia should not disqualify patients from an ICU admission.
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Indicators of survival duration in ovarian cancer and implications for aggressiveness of care.
Ovarian cancer patients frequently receive chemotherapy near the end of life. The purpose of the current study was to develop indicators that characterize those ovarian cancer patients who have a short life span. ⋯ Patients who received aggressive care did not have improvement in survival. Short disease remissions and increasing hospitalizations with SCE should be indicators of the appropriateness of reducing cure-oriented therapies and increasing palliative interventions.
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The authors previously developed a melanoma-specific module for the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy (FACT-Melanoma), a tool for the assessment of quality of life (QOL) in patients with melanoma. The reliability and validity of the FACT-Melanoma was examined in this study. ⋯ The results of the current study indicated that the FACT-Melanoma questionnaire is a reliable and valid instrument for patients with melanoma that can be used for the assessment of QOL in clinical trials.
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Quality indicators (QIs) are tools designed to measure and improve quality of care. The objective of this study was to assess stakeholder acceptability of QIs of end-of-life (EOL) care that potentially were measurable from population-based administrative health databases. ⋯ The findings of this study should be considered when developing quality monitoring systems. QIs will be most useful when stakeholders perceive them as measuring quality care.