Symptom improvement as prognostic factor for survival in cancer patients undergoing palliative care: a pilot study.
Support Care Cancer
; 20(6): 1221-6, 2012 Jun.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-21688165
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
The Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale (ESAS) is a validated tool for physical symptom assessment in palliative care practice which evaluates symptoms through a numeric scale from 0 to 10. The use of symptom improvement as a prognostic factor is controversial. To this purpose, a pilot study in advanced cancer patients now undergoing only palliative care was conducted.METHODS:
Patients were considered eligible if no longer able to receive any anticancer treatment; they were scheduled to undergo ESAS assessment at the hospitalization and hospital discharge time points. Symptoms' scores were divided into three severity classes mild, moderate and severe. Differences across symptoms' classes between hospitalization and hospital discharge time points were analysed with the paired-data McNemar test, according to tumour types.RESULTS:
ESAS assessment was administered to 68 patients with gastrointestinal (39 patients) and non-small cell lung cancer (29 patients); median age was 69 years; Karnofsky Performance Status was 50 in 27 (39.7%) patients and >50 in 41 (60.3%) patients. Palliative Prognostic Score was A for 26 (38.2%) patients, B for 37 (54.4%) patients and C for 5 (7.4%) patients. A statistically significant reduction of severe severity class rates was observed. Symptom improvement correlates with survival improvement Palliative Prognostic Score (hazard ratio (HR) 2.95, 95% CI 1.35-6.41, p = 0.006) and anorexia (HR 3.21, 95% 1.33-7.72, p = 0.009) appear to be prognostic factors for survival at the multivariate analysis for gastrointestinal cancer patients; asthenia is the only significant variable (HR 5.11, 95% CI 1.86-14.03, p = 0.002) for non-small cell lung cancer patients.CONCLUSIONS:
Symptom improvement according to ESAS after palliative care treatment represents an important prognostic for survival in patients no longer suitable to receive any anticancer active therapies.
Texto completo:
1
Banco de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Cuidados Paliativos
/
Carcinoma de Pulmón de Células no Pequeñas
/
Neoplasias Gastrointestinales
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Neoplasias Pulmonares
Tipo de estudio:
Diagnostic_studies
/
Etiology_studies
/
Prognostic_studies
Límite:
Aged
/
Aged80
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
/
Middle aged
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Support Care Cancer
Asunto de la revista:
NEOPLASIAS
/
SERVICOS DE SAUDE
Año:
2012
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
Italia