Validity and Usefulness of Applying Palliative Prognostic Score to Patients with Terminally Ill Hematological Malignancies

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Among various predicting tools of survival developed for terminally ill cancer patients, Palliative Prognostic Score (PaP) is used very frequently. The target diseases of PaP are solid malignancies other than renal cancer; thus hematological malignancies are not included in them. Objective: To demonstrate that it is appropriate and useful to apply PaP to patients with terminally ill hematological malignancies. Methods: We used PaP to predict the survival of 18 patients with terminally ill hematological malignancies hospitalized in our hospice ward and compared the prediction accuracy with that of the previous studies. Results: The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and accuracy of 21-day survival probability were 91.7%, 83.3%, 91.7%, 83.3%, and 88.9%, respectively. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and accuracy of 30-day survival probability were 72.7%, 85.7%, 88.9%, 66.7%, and 77.8%, respectively. Conclusion: Our results suggest that it may be possible to apply PaP to patients with terminally ill hematological malignancies.