Stability of End-of-Life Care Wishes and Gender-Specific Characteristics of Outpatients with Advanced Cancer under Palliative Therapy: A Prospective Observational Study.
Thomas Golombek, Nora Hegewald, Astrid Schnabel, Hansjakob Fries, Florian Lordick
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Introduction: Early integration of palliative care and advance care planning (ACP) play an increasingly important role in the treatment of patients with advanced cancer. Advance directives (ADs) and patients' preferences regarding end-of-life (EoL) care are important aspects of ACP. In the outpatient setting, the prevalence of those documents and EoL care wishes is not well investigated, and changes in the longitudinal course are poorly understood.
Methods: From June 2020 to August 2022, 67 outpatients with advanced solid tumors undergoing palliative cancer therapy were interviewed on the topic of ACP in a longitudinal course. From this database, the prevalence of ADs, healthcare proxy, EoL care wishes, and the need for counseling regarding these issues were collected. In addition, EoL care wishes were examined for their stability.
Results: Fifty-one patients (76.1%) reported having ADs, and 41 patients (61.2%) reported having a healthcare proxy. Nineteen patients (37.3%) with ADs and 11 patients (68.7%) without ADs indicated a wish for counseling. Reported EoL care wishes remained stable over a period of approximately 6 months. Nevertheless, intraindividual changes occurred over time within the different EoL care preferences. The desire for resuscitation and dialysis were significantly higher in men than in women (resuscitation: 15 of 21 men [71.4%] versus 9 of 22 women [40.9%], odds ratio [OR] 3.611, 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.01-12.89, p = 0.048; dialysis: 16 of the 23 men [69.6%] versus 9 of the 25 women [36.0%], OR: 4.063, 95% CI: 1.22-13.58, p = 0.023).
Conclusion: Our results show a reasonably high percentage of ADs and healthcare proxies in our study cohort. The observed stability of EoL requests encourages the implementation of structured queries for ADs and healthcare proxy for outpatients undergoing palliative treatment. Our data suggest that gender-specific characteristics should be further investigated in this context.
期刊介绍:
With the first issue in 2014, the journal ''Onkologie'' has changed its title to ''Oncology Research and Treatment''. By this change, publisher and editor set the scene for the further development of this interdisciplinary journal. The English title makes it clear that the articles are published in English – a logical step for the journal, which is listed in all relevant international databases. For excellent manuscripts, a ''Fast Track'' was introduced: The review is carried out within 2 weeks; after acceptance the papers are published online within 14 days and immediately released as ''Editor’s Choice'' to provide the authors with maximum visibility of their results. Interesting case reports are published in the section ''Novel Insights from Clinical Practice'' which clearly highlights the scientific advances which the report presents.