Palliative Care News

• 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
• Multimodal Therapy May Up Survival in Advanced Prostate Cancer But the notable survival advantage seen with primary treatment consisting of radical prostatectomy plus radiotherapy also came with a high cost to quality of life.
  Medscape Medical News, October 2018
• QCS 2018Risk for Opioid-Related Death Very Low in Cancer Patients Cancer patients have a far lower risk for opioid-related death compared to the general population.
  Medscape Medical News, October 2018
• Lay Patient Navigators a Boon to Latinos With Advanced Cancer Latinos with advanced cancer often counter barriers to palliative care, but community-based patient navigators can help in a culturally sensitive manner.
  Medscape Medical News, September 2018
• Baby-Boomers Expect Kids to Care for Them When They're Sick Three in four baby-boomers with children expect one of their kids to help care for them when their health fails in old age and they don't have a spouse who can do this, a UK study suggests.
  Reuters Health Information, September 2018
• Preventive Drug Prescribing Common in Lung Cancer Patients Near End of Life On discharge from the hospital, individuals with advanced lung cancer may be prescribed preventive drugs for conditions such as diabetes and heart disease, and efforts should be made to "deprescribe" such medications, researchers say.
  Reuters Health Information, September 2018
• Limited English May Mean Less-Gentle Death in ICU Death for patients in U.S. intensive care units may look a lot different for people with limited English proficiency than for native speakers, a large study suggests.
  Reuters Health Information, September 2018
• Hospice Underutilized for Heart Failure Patients Patients with heart failure rarely receive hospice services and those who do are referred late, researchers say.
  Reuters Health Information, September 2018
• Hospice Underutilized for Heart Failure Patients
  Reuters Health Information, September 2018
• California, Massachusetts Best at Preventing, Treating Cancer The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network's annual report examines all 50 states.
  Medscape Medical News, August 2018
• Palliative Care Uncommon Among Heart Failure Patients Presenting to the ED Most older patients with heart failure who present to the emergency department (ED) have no palliative care involvement, and most who do have less than two weeks of palliative care prior to death, according to a review of health records from Canada.
  Reuters Health Information, August 2018
• Missed Visits, Uncontrolled Pain, and Fraud: Report Says Hospice Lacks Oversight A new government watchdog report outlines vulnerabilities in Medicare’s $17 billion hospice program, pointing to inadequate services, inappropriate billing and outright fraud.
  Kaiser Health News, August 2018