Advertisement

Annals of Hematology

, Volume 98, Issue 11, pp 2605–2607 | Cite as

Characteristics and course of patients with advanced hematologic malignancies receiving specialized inpatient palliative care at a German university hospital

  • Dennis A. EichenauerEmail author
  • Heidrun Golla
  • Indra Thielen
  • Michael Hallek
  • Raymond Voltz
  • Klaus Maria Perrar
Letter to the Editor
First Online:

Dear Editor‚

Palliative care represents an established component in the management of advanced solid tumors (ST) [1, 2]. In contrast, the role of palliative care in patients with hematologic malignancies (HM) is not well defined. However, available data indicate that individuals with HM receive palliative care less frequently and later in the course of disease than their counterparts with ST [3, 4, 5, 6, 7].

To shed more light on characteristics and course of patients with HM receiving specialized inpatient palliative care and to detect possible differences in comparison with individuals with ST, we conducted an analysis comprising 1636 cancer patients who had been treated at the palliative care unit of the Department for Palliative Medicine of the University Hospital Cologne between 2010 and 2014 (admission after January 1, 2010, discharge or death before December 31, 2014). Among those, 159 (9.7%) had HM and 1474 (90.1%) had ST (Table 1). The ratio between patients with HM and...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Notes

Compliance with ethical standards

Disclosures

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

Given the non-interventional retrospective nature of the study, no ethical approval for its conduct was necessary according to the policy of the ethics committee of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Cologne. For the same reason, no informed consent had to be obtained from the included patients.

References

  1. 1.
    Ferrell BR, Temel JS, Temin S, Smith TJ (2017) Integration of palliative care into standard oncology care: ASCO clinical practice guideline update summary. J Oncol Pract 13(2):119–121.  https://doi.org/10.1200/JOP.2016.017897 CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  2. 2.
    Jordan K, Aapro M, Kaasa S, Ripamonti CI, Scotte F, Strasser F, Young A, Bruera E, Herrstedt J, Keefe D, Laird B, Walsh D, Douillard JY, Cervantes A (2018) European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) position paper on supportive and palliative care. Ann Oncol 29(1):36–43.  https://doi.org/10.1093/annonc/mdx757 CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  3. 3.
    Hui D, Didwaniya N, Vidal M, Shin SH, Chisholm G, Roquemore J, Bruera E (2014) Quality of end-of-life care in patients with hematologic malignancies: a retrospective cohort study. Cancer 120(10):1572–1578.  https://doi.org/10.1002/cncr.28614 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentralGoogle Scholar
  4. 4.
    Dasch B, Kalies H, Feddersen B, Ruderer C, Hiddemann W, Bausewein C (2017) Care of cancer patients at the end of life in a German university hospital: a retrospective observational study from 2014. PLoS One 12(4):e0175124.  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0175124 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentralGoogle Scholar
  5. 5.
    Beaussant Y, Daguindau E, Chauchet A, Rochigneux P, Tournigand C, Aubry R, Morin L (2018) Hospital end-of-life care in haematological malignancies. BMJ Support Palliat Care 8(3):314–324.  https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjspcare-2017-001446 CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  6. 6.
    Odejide OO, Cronin AM, Earle CC, LaCasce AS, Abel GA (2016) Hospice use among patients with lymphoma: impact of disease aggressiveness and curability. J Natl Cancer Inst 108(1).  https://doi.org/10.1093/jnci/djv280 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  7. 7.
    Kaiser F, Rudloff LV, Vehling-Kaiser U, Hollburg W, Nauck F, Alt-Epping B (2017) Palliative home care for patients with advanced haematological malignancies-a multicenter survey. Ann Hematol 96(9):1557–1562.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s00277-017-3045-3 CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  8. 8.
    LeBlanc TW, Abernethy AP, Casarett DJ (2015) What is different about patients with hematologic malignancies? A retrospective cohort study of cancer patients referred to a hospice research network. J Pain Symptom Manage 49(3):505–512.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2014.07.003 CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  9. 9.
    Kripp M, Willer A, Schmidt C, Pilz LR, Gencer D, Buchheidt D, Hochhaus A, Hofmann WK, Hofheinz RD (2014) Patients with malignant hematological disorders treated on a palliative care unit: prognostic impact of clinical factors. Ann Hematol 93(2):317–325.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s00277-013-1861-7 CrossRefPubMedGoogle Scholar
  10. 10.
    Hui D, Bansal S, Park M, Reddy A, Cortes J, Fossella F, Bruera E (2015) Differences in attitudes and beliefs toward end-of-life care between hematologic and solid tumor oncology specialists. Ann Oncol 26(7):1440–1446.  https://doi.org/10.1093/annonc/mdv028 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentralGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.First Department of Internal Medicine, Center for Integrated Oncology Aachen Bonn Cologne DusseldorfUniversity of CologneCologneGermany
  2. 2.Department of Palliative Medicine, Center for Integrated Oncology Aachen Bonn Cologne DusseldorfUniversity of CologneCologneGermany

Personalised recommendations

Cite article

Buy options