Successful Control of Pain from Malignant Psoas Syndrome by Spinal Opioid with Local Anesthetic Agents.

BACKGROUND: Malignant psoas syndrome (MPS) is a rare but distressing pain syndrome observed in advanced cancer patients. Pain due to MPS is often refractory to multimodal analgesic treatment, including opioid analgesics. As only 1 case demonstrating the efficacy of neuraxial analgesia in managing pain due to MPS has been reported, its role in MPS remains uncertain. CASES: We present 3 cases demonstrating the successful management of pain due to MPS using spinal opioids with local anesthetic agents. All patients were under the care of the palliative care consultation service in an acute care hospital and refractory to multimodal analgesic treatment, including opioid, non-opioid, and adjuvant analgesics. Switching opioid administration to the epidural or intrathecal route with a local anesthetic agent provided good pain control in all 3 patients. Moreover, all patients showed improvements in both Palliative Performance Scale and Functional Independence Measure scores after starting a spinal opioid with a local anesthetic agent. CONCLUSIONS: The findings in the present cases indicate neuraxial analgesia may be of benefit, in terms of managing pain and improving functional status, in MPS patients with insufficient pain control by multimodal analgesic treatment. Physicians should consider the use of neuraxial analgesia in cases of MPS where pain is uncontrolled with multimodal analgesic treatment to provide the best possible quality of life for patients with MPS.

[The Role of Certified Nurse in Palliative Care to Promote the Discharge Support and Regional Cooperation for Cancer Patients].

The objective of this study is to understand the issues and solutions considered by certified nurses(CN)in palliative care (hereinafter referred to as"palliative care CN)regarding discharge support and regional cooperation for cancer patients, and to discover the roles and responsibilities of palliative care CN. Data obtained from training sessions for 22 palliative care CNs was reconfigured and analyzed. As a result, problems related to discharge support and regional cooperation for cancer patients were classified into 13 categories and 3 core categories. The following roles for palliative care CN were proposed to promote discharge support and regional cooperation for cancer patients: (1) Inter-professional sharing of knowledge about patients and their families to reconcile the intentions of the patient and family members with predictions of progression of the illness; (2) Enable hospital nurses to obtain information about patients after discharge in order to establish a clear image for medical treatment; and(3) Support for ward nurses regarding cooperation to alleviate symptoms and offer medical care to patients who are highly dependent on medical care, and to become a point of contact for cooperation with visiting nurses.

Validation of the palliative prognostic index and palliative prognostic score in a palliative care consultation team setting for patients with advanced cancers in an acute care hospital in Japan.

This study aims to clarify the predictive value of two prognostic prediction tools, the palliative prognostic index (PPI) and the palliative prognostic score (PaPS), in a setting of general hospital palliative care team for patients with advanced cancers in an acute care hospital in Japan. The retrospective observational study includes 247 patients for the PPI analysis and 187 patients for the PaPS analysis, all patients are older than 18 years, hospitalized with an advanced cancer, and referred to the palliative care team in an acute care hospital in Japan. The study successfully show that both the PPI and PaPS have an ability to divide patients into three groups, each with significantly different survival length (p<0.001). However, there are discrepancies in the results for predicting the length of survival between the study and the original studies conducted in hospice settings. The results suggest that although PPI and PaPS successfully divide patients into three groups with significantly different survival times, discrepancies exist in predicting the actual length of survival.

Pneumocystis pneumonia in patients treated with long-term steroid therapy for symptom palliation: a neglected infection in palliative care.

We report 3 cases of pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) in patients with advanced cancer who received palliative care. All patients received long-term steroid therapy for symptom management. A diagnosis of PCP was based on clinical symptoms and a positive Pneumocystis jiroveci polymerase chain reaction test from induced sputum specimens. Despite appropriate treatment, only 1 patient recovered from PCP. Long-term steroid, often prescribed in palliative care settings, is the most common risk factor for PCP in non-HIV patients. Pneumocystis pneumonia may cause distressing symptoms such as severe dyspnea, and the mortality rate is high. Therefore, it is important to consider PCP prophylaxis for high-risk patients and to diagnose PCP early and provide appropriate treatment to alleviate PCP-related symptoms and avert unnecessary shortening of a patient's life expectancy.