Effectiveness of palliative care interventions on patient-reported outcomes and all-cause mortality in community-dwelling adults with heart failure: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background

Current evidence that supports palliative care interventions predominantly focuses on individuals with cancer or hospitalized patients. However, the effectiveness of palliative care on patient-reported outcomes and mortality in community-dwelling adults with heart failure has not been evaluated.

Objective

We aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of palliative care interventions on patient-reported outcomes and all-cause mortality in community-dwelling adults with heart failure.

Design

A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

Methods

MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane Library, and CINAHL databases were searched from inception to October 2023. Randomized controlled trials were considered if they compared palliative care interventions with usual care, attention control, or waiting-list control primarily in a community-dwelling heart failure patient population. The primary outcome was patient-reported generic health-related or heart failure-specific quality of life. Secondary outcomes were patient-reported symptom burden, psychological health (anxiety and depression), spiritual well-being, and all-cause mortality. Two independent reviewers screened the retrieved articles and extracted data from the included studies. A random-effects meta-analysis was performed to pool the data, followed by sensitivity analysis, subgroup analysis, and meta-regression. All analyses were performed using R version 4.2.2.

Results

Eleven eligible studies were included in this review with a total of 1535 patients. Compared to usual care, palliative care interventions demonstrated statistically significant effects on improving generic health-related quality of life (SMD, 0.30 [95 % CI, 0.12 to 0.48]) and heart failure-specific quality of life (SMD, 0.17 [95 % CI, 0.03 to 0.31]). Palliative care interventions also reduced anxiety (SMD, − 0.22 [95 % CI, − 0.40 to − 0.05]) and depression (SMD, − 0.18 [95 % CI, − 0.33 to − 0.03]), and enhanced spiritual well-being (SMD, 0.43 [95 % CI, 0.05 to 0.81]), without adversely affecting all-cause mortality (RR, 1.00 [95 % CI, 0.76 to 1.33]). Yet, the interventions had no significant effects on symptom burden (SMD, − 0.09 [95 % CI, − 0.40 to 0.21]). The certainty of evidence across the outcomes ranged from very low to moderate based on the GRADE approach.

Conclusions

Palliative care interventions are beneficial for community-dwelling adults with heart failure in that the interventions improved patient-reported quality of life, psychological health, and spiritual well-being, and importantly, did not lead to higher mortality rates. Findings of this review support the implementation of palliative care for adults with heart failure in community settings.

Registration

CRD42023482495.