Experiences of patient-family caregiver dyads in palliative care during hospital-to-home transition process.

BACKGROUND: there are many people with advanced cancer who are cared for in the community, though little is known about patients' and family members' lived experiences during discharge from hospital to home. OBJECTIVES: to describe the experiences of the patient-family caregiver dyad during the transition from hospital to home at a National Cancer Institute in Colombia. METHODS: a descriptive phenomenological approach was taken for this study. RESULTS: Forty-one nominal codes emerged, comprising seven themes that describe the experience of the individual in palliative care and their family caregiver during the transition from hospital to home care. CONCLUSIONS: the patient-family caregiver dyad have to deal with symptoms while being confronted with the prognosis and progression of the disease at home. The economic costs in acquiring supplies needed for proper care provision are considerable. In addition there are administrative fees from consultations and accessing the health services. Emotional and spiritual support for the dyad is required.

Assessment of infection with polyomaviruses BKV, JCV and SV40 in different groups of Cuban individuals.

We investigated the frequency of BKV, JCV and SV40 reactivation in three groups of Cuban patients by multiplex nested PCR assay of 40 paraffin-embedded colorectal neoplasm tissues, 113 urine samples, and 125 plasma samples from 27 transplant recipients, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from 67 HIV-1-infected individuals with central nervous system (CNS) disorders. None of these polyomaviruses were detected in colorectal neoplasms. JCV DNA was detected in 2 of 67 patients (2.9%) with CNS disorders, but neither BKV nor SV40 was identified. BKV was found in urine from 38.5% and 28.6% of adult and pediatric transplant recipients, respectively. In adult renal transplant recipients, excretion of BKV in urine was significantly associated with episodes of acute rejection (p=0.012) and with excretion of HCMV in urine (p= 0.008). In Cuba, the polyomaviruses studied here could not be related to colorectal neoplasms, and JCV was rarely detected in CSFs of HIV-1-infected individuals, whilst BKV reactivation was found to occur frequently in organ transplant recipients.