Articles: palliative-care.
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Most patients nearing the end of life can benefit from a palliative approach in primary care. We currently do not know how to measure a palliative approach in family practice. The objective of this study was to describe the provision of a palliative approach and evaluate clinicians' perceptions of the results. ⋯ This study identified measurable indicators of a palliative approach in family practice, that can be used as the basis for quality improvement.
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Observational Study
Treatment effects of palliative care consultation and patient contentment: A monocentric observational study.
Palliative care is a central component of the therapy in terminally ill patients. During treatment in non-palliative departments this can be realized by consultation. To analyze the change in symptom burden during palliative care consultation. ⋯ The analysis of FAMCARE-6 patient contentment was lower or equal to two in all of the six items. There was a weak negative association between the change in symptom burden of psycho-emotional items "distress/feeling upset" (P = .006, rSp = -0,226), "sadness" and patient satisfaction in FAMCARE-6. A considerable improvement of the extensive symptom burden particularly of pain relief was achieved by integrating palliative consultation in clinical practice.
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Observational Study
The role of EORTC QLQ-C15-PAL scores and inflammatory biomarkers in predicting survival in terminally ill patients with cancer.
The clinical use of patient-reported outcomes as compared to inflammatory biomarkers for predicting cancer survival remains a challenge in palliative care settings. We evaluated the role of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 15 Palliative scores (EORTC QLQ-C15-PAL) and the inflammatory biomarkers C-reactive protein (CRP), albumin (Alb), and neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) for survival prediction in patients with advanced cancer. ⋯ Our findings suggest that the assessment of not only objective indicators for the systemic inflammatory response but also patient-reported outcomes using EORTC QLQ-C15-PAL is beneficial for the prediction of short-term survival in terminally ill patients with cancer.