Impact of Palliative Care in Evaluating and Relieving Symptoms in Patients with Advanced Cancer. Results from the DEMETRA Study

Oscar Corli, Giacomo Pellegrini, Cristina Bosetti, Luca Riva, Matteo Crippa, Emanuele Amodio and Gianlorenzo Scaccabarozzi
Additional contact information
Oscar Corli: Department of Oncology, Unit of Pain and Palliative Care Research, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS, 20156 Milan, Italy
Giacomo Pellegrini: Fondazione Floriani, Via Privata Nino Bonnet, 2-20154 Milan, Italy
Cristina Bosetti: Department of Oncology, Laboratory of Methodology for Clinical Research, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS, 20156, Milan, Italy
Luca Riva: Dipartimento Fragilità/Rete Locale Cure palliative, ASST Lecco, 23900 Lecco, Italy
Matteo Crippa: Fondazione Floriani, Via Privata Nino Bonnet, 2-20154 Milan, Italy
Emanuele Amodio: Department of Health Promotion, Mother and Child Care, Internal Medicine and Medical Specialties (PROMISE), University of Palermo, 90127 Palermo, Italy
Gianlorenzo Scaccabarozzi: Dipartimento Fragilità/Rete Locale Cure palliative, ASST Lecco, 23900 Lecco, Italy

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 22, 1-11

Abstract: Background: Cancer patients experience multiple symptoms throughout the course of the disease. We aimed to provide a comprehensive analysis of the symptom burden in patients with advanced cancer at admission to specialist palliative care (PC) services and seven days later to estimate the immediate impact of PC intervention. Patient and methods: The analysis was based on an observational, prospective, multicenter study (named DEMETRA) conducted in Italy on new patients accessing network specialist PC centers during the period May 2017–November 2017. The prevalence and intensity of symptoms were assessed at baseline and after seven days using three tools including the Edmonton Symptom Assessment System (ESAS). Results: Five PC centers recruited 865 cancer patients. Thirty-three different symptoms were observed at the baseline, the most frequent being asthenia (84.9%) and poor well-being (71%). The intensity of the most frequent symptoms according to ESAS ranged from 5.5 for asthenia to 3.9 for nausea. The presence and intensity of physical symptoms increased with increasing levels of anxiety and depression. After seven days, prevalence of nausea and breathlessness as well as intensity of almost all symptoms significantly decreased. Conclusions: The study confirmed the considerable symptom burden of patients with advanced cancer. PC intervention has significantly reduced the severity of symptoms, despite the patients’ advanced disease and short survival.

Keywords: cancer patients; palliative care; symptoms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/22/8429/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/22/8429/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:22:p:8429-:d:444939

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().