The Society of Cancer Management
  • Home
    • An After Life
    • News Archive
  • About
    • Terms & Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • Copyright Notice
  • Contact

. . . supporting research that improves cancer survival.

 
Please contact us if you would like to contribute a news item. We are keen to publish more articles from UK-based research and findings that relate to microbial infections during therapy.

Many brain tumor patients do not receive adequate end-of-life care

24/12/2017

0 Comments

 
While more than 60 percent of patients with the brain tumors called malignant gliomas enroll in hospice services, almost a quarter of them do so within a week of death, probably too late for patients and family members to benefit from hospice care. A study by research team from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center also finds that certain groups are more likely than others to receive a week or less of hospice services.

"We know from prior research that patients with terminal illnesses, including incurable cancers, derive numerous benefits from hospice services," says Justin Jordan, MD, MPH, clinical director of the Pappas Center for Neuro-Oncology in the MGH Cancer Center, corresponding author of the report published in the journal Neuro-Oncology. "The magnitude of these benefits is notably reduced with late hospice referral. Even though timely hospice enrollment is an important measure of quality oncology care, we found that 37 percent of malignant glioma patients received no hospice at all prior to death."

Malignant gliomas include the aggressive and invariably fatal glioblastomas and other, slower growing but still incurable tumors. The average survival for glioblastoma patients is 15 months, and only 5 percent survive for as long as five years. Since no previous study has investigated either the proportion of glioma patients who enter hospice care or the length of time they receive hospice services, the MGH team analyzed information from a cancer database that included 12,437 patients with malignant gliomas who were treated and died from 2002 through 2012.

Of those patients, 7,849 were enrolled in hospice before their death, while 4,588 were not. The overall proportions of patients receiving hospice care remained fairly stable during the 10-year study period. While the average length of stay in hospice care was 21 days, 23 percent of patients enrolled less than a week before death, and 11 percent, less than three days. While race, education and household income were not associated with hospice length of stay, patients who were younger, male, and resided in rural areas were more likely to have a short hospice stay.
Lead author Deborah Forst, MD, of the Pappas Center explains that the American Society of Clinical Oncology recommends at least three days and preferably seven or more days of hospice care as a measure of high-quality cancer care. She says, "Malignant gliomas are associated with particularly dismal survival and rapid physical decline, so we believe that quality end-of-life care is of paramount importance for this particular group of patients. The fact that a significant proportion of patients with malignant gliomas enroll in hospice within the last week of their life probably limits the benefits that they and their families receive."

Jordan notes that, while their study highlights some important socioeconomic and demographic disparities in hospice utilization, it cannot identify the reasons behind the disparities. "Further research is needed to understand barriers to hospice enrollment for patients with malignant gliomas, with particular focus on the drivers of age-related, gender-related and geographic disparities in hospice utilization," he says.

Forst et al. Hospice utilization in patients with malignant gliomas. 2017. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/neuonc/nox196   [Article]
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Cancer Therapy & Palliative Care News

    This feed features recent developments in cancer therapy and palliative care. Views in these articles do not necessarily represent those of the Cancer Management Society.

    Archives

    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013

    Categories

    All
    General
    Presentation
    Research
    Review

    RSS Feed

Home

About

Contact Us

Terms & Conditions

Privacy Policy

Copyright Notice

RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
© The Society of Cancer Management 2017