Goals of Surgical Interventions in Youths Receiving Palliative Care.

Importance: Most youths receiving palliative care undergo many surgical interventions over their lifetimes. The intended purposes of interventions in the context of goals of care are not commonly articulated.

Objective: To describe the goals and purposes of surgical intervention in youths receiving palliative care and propose a framework discussing intervention using goal-oriented language.

Design, setting, and participants: This retrospective cohort analysis was conducted among a subset of patients enrolled between April 2017 and March 2021 in a prospective multicenter cohort study of youths receiving palliative care (the Pediatric Palliative Care Research Network's Shared Data and Research [SHARE] Study). Patients younger than 30 years receiving palliative care services were eligible for inclusion in SHARE, and all enrolled at Boston Children's Hospital/Dana Farber Cancer Institute, a SHARE site, were included in this study. Goals and purposes of all surgical interventions from the time of diagnosis through the present were abstracted from patient records. A goal and purpose framework was generated using a hybrid deductive-inductive approach based on established goals-of-care frameworks and the clinical context of surgical interventions. Data were analyzed in September 2023.

Main outcomes and measures: Primary outcomes included goals and purposes of surgical interventions performed in the study population.

Results: Among 197 youths receiving palliative care (mean [SD] age at palliative care start, 8.01 [7.53] years; 108 male [54.8%]; 6 Asian [3.0%], 12 Black [6.1%], 129 White [65.5%], and 16 with >1 race [8.1%]; 27 Hispanic [13.7%] and 142 not Hispanic [72.1%]), almost all individuals (189 youths [95.9%]) underwent at least 1 surgical intervention (mean [SD] 17.5 [16.3] interventions; median [IQR] 13 [5-22] interventions). Of 3331 surgical interventions, there were 878 interventions (26.5%) conducted with the goal of life extension, 1229 interventions (37.1%) conducted for life enhancement, and 79 interventions (2.4%) conducted for both goals; the remaining 1130 interventions (34.1%) held neither goal. Most interventions were performed with the purpose of diagnosis (1092 interventions [32.9%]) or cure and repair (1055 interventions [31.8%]), with fewer performed for the purpose of placing or maintaining assistive technology (696 interventions [21.0%]) or for supportive (434 interventions [13.1%]) or temporizing (39 interventions [1.2%]) purposes. Patients with cardiovascular disease and cancers constituted approximately half (592 patients [56.1%]) of those undergoing curative or repair interventions, whereas youths with neurologic or genetic conditions constituted approximately half (244 patients [56.2%]) of those undergoing supportive interventions.

Conclusions and relevance: In this cohort study, nearly all youths underwent surgical intervention, and the purposes of intervention differed by serious illness type. These findings suggest that conversations centered on a proposed framework concerning goals and purposes of surgical intervention may facilitate goal-concordant, high-quality care for youths with serious illness.