palliative care

BACKGROUND: In Indonesia, the diagnosis of a serious illness is often mediated through the patient's family, reflecting the cultural importance of family involvement in the patient's care and collective decision-making. AIM: To use a case study to show the difficulty that healthcare professionals face telling the patient the truth about their condition in Indonesia. METHOD: The Kagawa-Singer and Blackhall ABCDE framework was used during truth-telling dilemmas to assess patients' and families' attitudes (A), beliefs (B), contexts (C), decision-making styles (D) and environments (E)...

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BACKGROUND: Telemedicine is a means of providing efficient treatment for children with complex chronic conditions and/or subsidiary palliative paediatric care. AIM: To evaluate how satisfied families and healthcare professionals are with a telemedicine programme. METHODOLOGY: This is a qualitative study of narrative design. Ten interviews were conducted with family members and professionals who had been using telemedicine for a year. Sampling was intentional and a discourse and content analysis was conducted...

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BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is the most common malignancy among women. Women with breast cancer need to adapt all aspects of their life following their diagnosis. AIM: To investigate how women with breast cancer make adaptations in their lives to cope with the condition. METHODS: A directed content analysis was used for this study and 23 participants were interviewed. The participants included women undergoing a mastectomy and their husbands, oncologists, oncology ward nurses and psychologists...

BACKGROUND: The transfer of end-of-life patients to hospital via admission to an emergency service mainly happens because of a lack of community support nearby and a lack of resources in palliative care. AIMS: This study aimed to define the concept of avoidable admission to an emergency department for palliative patients. METHODS: An integrative literature review was performed. The results of this were put to a panel of palliative care experts via a Delphi process to determine their consensus and agreement with the statements...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Background: Palliative care has shown benefit in patients with cancer; however, little is known about the overall utilization of palliative care services in patients with pancreatic cancer and the impact of aggressive end-of-life interventions. This study aimed to explore the incidence of palliative care consultations (PCCs) in hospitalized patients with pancreatic cancer in the United States and the association between palliative care consultations and the use of aggressive interventions at the end of life...

The management of patients with life-threatening respiratory disease in the ICU and at home has become increasingly of interest over the past decades. Growing knowledge supports the use of NRS, aimed at improving patient comfort and improving quality of life. However, its role during palliative care is not well defined, and evidence of support remains limited. The aim of this narrative review is to examine the recent evidence relating to the use of non-invasive respiratory support at the end of life, in order to clarify who benefits and when...

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly interrupted the grieving experiences of bereaved families and drastically changed their ways of dealing with loss. Our study aims to gain an in-depth understanding of the experience of bereaved relatives of patients who died in palliative care units during the COVID-19 pandemic. The phenomenological research design included sixteen family members of hospitalized palliative patients who died from November 2021 to June 2022. The study involved conducting qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews with family members 12-24 months after the death of their loved ones...

Palliative thoracic radiotherapy provides rapid and effective symptom relief in approximately two-thirds of NSCLC patients treated. In patients with poor performance status, the degree of palliation appears unrelated to the radiation dose or fractionation schedule. Conversely, in patients with good performance status, higher radiation doses administered over longer periods have shown modest survival benefits. These findings stem from studies conducted before the advent of immunotherapy and targeted therapy in clinical practice...

BACKGROUND: Spinal muscular atrophy type 1 (SMA1) is the most severe and early form of SMA, a genetic disease with motor neuron degeneration. Onasemnogene abeparvovec gene transfer therapy (GT) has changed the natural history of SMA1, but real-world data are scarce. METHODS: A French national expert committee identified 95 newly diagnosed treatment-naive SMA1 patients between June 2019 and June 2022. We prospectively report on children treated with GT as the first and only therapy who had more than one-year of follow-up...

BACKGROUND: Basal cell carcinoma is the most prevalent skin cancer, most characterized by local aggressiveness but with low metastatic potential, and bone metastasis is quite heterogeneous, thus the incidence profile is variable size from 0.0028% to 0.5%. We have this patient with an unusual example of basal cell carcinoma with bone metastases to add to the scarce report on this matter. CASE DESCRIPTION: Here we document a 48-year-old Persian man with a background of being exposed to the sun for a long time...

BACKGROUND: Despite the proven benefits of early palliative care, patient communication regarding these services remains elusive. Therefore, this paper aims to (a) provide a focused literature review on nurse palliative care communication addressing chronic uncertainty in life-limiting illness (LLI), (b) define the Reconceptualization of Uncertainty in illness Theory and Problematic Integration Theory within a nursing Unitary Caring Science philosophical worldview and, (c) synthesize these theories and literature review into a unique theoretical framework for early palliative care communication in acute care nursing...

Pediatric palliative care is a holistic care of children suffering from life-threatening or life-limiting illnesses and encompasses care of a child's body, mind, and spirit and involves giving support to the family. According to the Global Atlas of Palliative Care, 6% of the global need for palliative care is in children. In order to provide palliative care, one needs to identify and diagnose the conditions requiring palliative care. There has always been a confusion in identifying pediatric conditions requiring palliative care...

PURPOSE: Social eating (SE) is a corner stone of daily living activities, quality of life (QoL), and aging well. In addition to feeding functional disorders, patients with head and neck cancer (HNC) face individual and social psychological distress. In this aging population, we intended to better assess the influence of age on these challenges, and the role of self-stigmatization limiting SE in patients with and beyond HNC. METHODS: This was an exploratory multicenter cross-sectional mixed method study...

PURPOSE: To explore the trajectories of acceptance of disability in young and middle-aged breast cancer patients based on a latent class growth analysis, investigate factors associated with each trajectory, and identify whether return to normal living differs in different trajectories. METHODS: Young and middle-aged patients newly diagnosed with breast cancer who underwent surgery were followed up at baseline, and 1, 3, and 6 months in China. Participants completed sociodemographic information questionnaires, the Adaptation of Disability Scale Revised, and the Reintegration to Normal Living Index...

CONTEXT: Heart failure (HF) is considered a multi-faceted and life-threatening syndrome characterized by high symptom-burden and significant mortality. OBJECTIVES: To describe the symptom-burden in patients with HF and identify their palliative care needs. In this respect, symptom burden related to sex, age and classification of HF using New York Heart Association Functional Classification (NYHA) were analyzed. METHODS: A cross-sectional questionnaire survey included adult HF patients according to NYHA II, III, and IV...

CONTEXT: Home-visit nurses find it challenging to determine the appropriate time to initiate end-of-life discussions with cancer patients. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to develop the Timing of End-of-Life Discussions (T-EOLD) scale to help home-visit nurses determine the appropriate time to initiate end-of-life discussions with cancer patients and to test its reliability and validity. METHODS: The scale items were developed based on qualitative data extracted from interviews, literature reviews, and expert panel discussions...

CONTEXT: Palliative care (PC) has shown significant growth in the US and is associated with improved patient and caregiver experiences. Nevertheless, there are concerns that PC is underutilized in pediatric oncology. Understanding parental attitudes towards PC is crucial to improving PC utilization. OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to explore bereaved parent attitudes towards PC in pediatric oncology. METHODS: This study used data from Alex's Lemonade Stand: My Childhood Cancer Bereavement Survey...