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End-Of-Life Care for Breast Cancer May Be Inadequate What is this ?

 
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 24, 2004 12:05 am    Post subject: End-Of-Life Care for Breast Cancer May Be Inadequate Reply with quote
Fri 24 September, 2004 01:31

By Megan Rauscher

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - While supportive care to relieve symptoms is now the standard of care at the end of life, a new study shows that a "sizeable proportion" of breast cancer patients nearing death do not have access to such treatment, also referred to as palliative care.

"Palliative care has been shown to improve quality of life of dying patients with cancer," Dr. Bruno Gagnon from Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal told Reuters Health. "Unfortunately, this study demonstrates that women dying of breast cancer had limited access to such care, especially the younger ones. "

Gagnon and colleagues analyzed the pattern of care at the end of life for 2,291 women terminally ill with breast cancer and found that the majority (75 percent) did not receive palliative care during the last six months of life.

"Very few" (6.9 percent) died at home, Gagnon said. More than two thirds (69.6 percent) died in acute care hospital beds.

This low rate of home deaths is "striking," the investigators report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, and may be explained by the high level of accessibility to hospital beds in Quebec province, the site of the study.

Age was a factor in the receipt of palliative care. Women younger than age 50 were less likely to receive palliative care at the end of life than were women in middle age, while women older than 70 were the most likely to receive palliative care.

Commenting on these findings, Gagnon said: "The prevention of suffering is an integrated part of cancer control. Health care policies for end-of-life care should seriously promote health services for the terminally ill in view of preventing undue suffering."

SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Oncology, September 1, 2004
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