Palliative Care News

• Treatment Not Needed for DVT in Very Advanced Cancer Patients Deep vein thrombosis (DVT) is seen in about a third of patients with very advanced cancer, but its presence is not associated with significant symptoms or survival.
  Medscape Medical News, February 2019
• Hospitals Serving More Minorities May Offer Less Palliative Care Patients may have less access to palliative care at U.S. hospitals that primarily serve minorities, a study suggests.
  Reuters Health Information, February 2019
• Aspirin, Anticoagulants Up Rate of False Positives With FIT for Colorectal Cancer Regular use of aspirin or anticoagulants reduces the positive predictive value (PPV) of fecal immunochemical testing (FIT) for detecting colorectal cancer and advanced adenomas, researchers from Norway report.
  Reuters Health Information, February 2019
• How Do You Handle Tough Conversations With Your Patients? Although many physicians believe it is their duty to talk about prognosis and life expectancy, many patients don't want to have that discussion.
  Medscape Reader Polls, February 2019
• Progress in Rare Cancers Is ASCO Advance of the Year Progress in the treatment of several rare types of cancer has been highlighted as clinical cancer advances of the past year.
  Medscape Medical News, February 2019
• Tool Does Not Help Care Decisions in Prolonged Life Support A Web-based decision aid did not help surrogate decision makers and clinicians agree on treatment goals for patients on prolonged mechanical ventilation.
  Medscape Medical News, January 2019
• GICS 2019New Standard of Care in PD-L1+ Esophageal Cancer? Patients with advanced esophageal cancer who have a high level of PD-L1 showed improved survival on poembrolizumab compared to standard chemotherapy.
  Medscape Medical News, January 2019
• AAN Calls for Uniform Definition of Brain Death The academy says a specific, uniform standard for the determination of brain death is critical to provide the highest quality patient-centered neurologic and end-of-life care.
  Medscape Medical News, January 2019
• Palliative-care Patients Perform Worse on Tests of Driving Safety Neurocognitive testing along with a road test or simulated driving test are the best approach to gauging whether palliative care patients can drive safely, according to a new review.
  Reuters Health Information, December 2018
• As Spain Readies Euthanasia Law, Dying Sclerosis Victim Senses Hope Painfully aware that his advancing illness will eventually leave him on life support, Spaniard Mariano Lopez has his hopes pinned not on a cure but on a parliamentary bill that would allow him to meet death on his own terms.
  Reuters Health Information, December 2018
• Rethinking Conversations on Prognosis and Life Expectancy Talking to patients about end-of-life care is tricky for any physician, especially when the patient doesn't want to talk about it either.
  Medscape Medical News, December 2018
• PCOS 2018Opioid Misuse in Cancer Patients: Fearmongering or Real Risk? As the opioid crisis goes on, cancer patients are increasingly being caught in the crossfire: is this patient population at risk for abuse or misuse of these drugs?
  Medscape Medical News, December 2018
• PCOS 2018Palliative Care Adapted to 'Real World' Community Settings Palliative care can be successfully adapted to an outpatient community-based setting and added to a cancer treatment regimen, according to new findings.
  Medscape Medical News, November 2018
• PCOS 2018Early Palliative Rehabilitation Improves QOL in Advanced Cancer A highly flexible intervention model in which patients selected their own outcome measures improved quality of life as compared with standard care.
  Medscape Medical News, November 2018
• PCOS 2018Cancer Pain Control App Works -- Palliative Care for Everyone? Dramatically improved artificial intelligence holds promise for making palliative care services available anywhere, anytime for patients with advanced cancer pain.
  Medscape Medical News, November 2018
• PCOS 2018Immunotherapy Adverse Events More Common Than Initially Reported The rate of immunotherapy adverse events, as evidenced in real world data, is much higher than was previously reported in the pivotal clinical trials of these agents.
  Medscape Medical News, November 2018
• New Palliative Care Guidelines Demand 'Seismic Shift' in Care The new updated palliative guidelines call for a more coordinated and integrated approach across the entire care continuum and recommend that care be provided by all practitioners.
  Medscape Medical News, November 2018
• Agent Orange Exposure Doesn't Appear to Worsen Prostate-Cancer Outcomes Exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange does not appear to be associated with worse oncologic outcomes in military veterans receiving androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) for advanced prostate cancer, a large new study suggests.
  Reuters Health Information, October 2018
• ASTRO 2018Incorrect Survival Prediction Ups Aggressive End-of-Life Care Inaccurate survival predictions increase the risk that terminal cancer patients will receive poor-quality end-of-life care, such as whole-brain radiation therapy, from which they derive no benefit.
  Medscape Medical News, October 2018
• QCS 2018Cancer Care Comparable for Medicaid vs Commercial Insurance Cancer patients enrolled in Medicaid received care that was comparable or even superior to that of patients covered by commercial insurance.
  Medscape Medical News, October 2018