End-of-life care gains increasing prominence

From Hollywood to Washington, care at the end of life increasingly is part of the national conversation.

As more than 70 million baby boomers (Americans born between 1946 and 1964) approach the end of their life spans, the cultural, clinical and socioeconomic impacts of end-of-life care have become high-profile topics. The French film "Amour," which depicts the challenges faced by an octogenarian couple after the wife has a series of strokes, has received an Academy Award Best Picture nomination. The Institute of Medicine will convene a panel of experts on Feb. 22-24 in Washington to examine the state of end-of-life care. The goal of the IOM Committee on Transforming End of Life Care is to produce a consensus report by 2014 to address end-of-life care. "Coordinated, expert, compassionate care for people dying from chronic diseases continues to challenge the American health care system," according to the IOM’s online announcement of the meeting.

In addition, the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care is hosting a National Summit on Advanced Illness Care on Jan. 29-30 in Washington. The Coalition includes a wide range of constituencies including the IOM, the American Heart Association, the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, and the American Geriatrics Society, as well as insurers, health systems, patient advocacy groups, and others.

As policy issues are discussed and begin to take shape, outcomes research focused on end-of-life care will increasingly gain importance. In the area of cancer care, here are some of the highlights of such research presented at a Quality Care Symposium sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology in December 2012 in San Diego.

Palliative care teams: A palliative care team formed by Dr. Allen R. Chen and his associates at Johns Hopkins’s comprehensive cancer center helped change patient and family decisions regarding end-of-life care during a 4-year period and decreased use of intensive or invasive procedures in the last 6 months of life.

The team offered inpatient and clinic consultations and didactic sessions to physicians to improve how they discuss end-of-life issues with patients, plus support for family meetings to discuss and document the goals of care, said Dr. Chen, associate professor of oncology and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

Of the 525 oncology patients who died in the cancer center while hospitalized from 2008 through 2011, the proportion who chose to have do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders, withdrew ICU support, or chose comfort care instead of more aggressive care increased from 81% to 95% over the course of the 4 years, a statistically significant difference, he reported.

The rate of ICU care during patients’ final hospitalizations did not change significantly, but the proportion of patients who were put on mechanical ventilation for more than 14 days decreased significantly from 10% to 5%. These earlier withdrawals of care did not increase the risk of death, Dr. Chen said – the rate of survival to discharge from the oncology ICU did not change significantly.

The investigators now are looking for ways to minimize ICU visits at the end of life, he said. The presence of advanced cancer, being on a cardiac monitor, or needing supplemental oxygen foreshadowed critical illness in patients in the study. "We want to facilitate the difficult discussion" about end-of-life care choices "before critical care is needed," he said. So far, their efforts haven’t resulted in decreased use of ICU services at the end of life.

Minimizing surgical risks: One of the first comprehensive analyses of surgical outcomes in patients with disseminated cancer found that the risk of death increases greatly with emergency surgery.

John Pesavento, a medical student at Creighton University, Omaha, Neb., and his associates analyzed preoperative and postoperative data from the American College of Surgeon’s National Surgical Quality Improvement Program database on move than 147,000 patients who underwent surgical procedures between 2005 and 2008.

Eight of the 10 most common procedures resulted in significantly higher 30-day mortality rates in the cancer patients as compared with the same surgeries in patients who did not have disseminated cancer.

Comparing patients with and without disseminated cancer, 30-day mortality rates were 21% and 15%, respectively, after exploration of the abdomen, 15% and 9% after removal of the small bowel, 11% and 6% after colon removal, 11% and 5% after colostomy, 10% and 5% after partial removal of the colon, 10% and 0.5% after cholecystectomy, 1.8% and 0.9% after repair of a bowel opening, and 1% and 0.1% after mastectomy, he reported. The most common operations in patients with disseminated cancer were partial removal of the colon (in 11%), partial removal of the liver (9%), partial removal of the intestine (5%), and abdominal exploration (5%), he reported in a poster presentation.

When done as emergency procedures, however, 7 of the top 10 surgeries led to significantly higher 30-day mortality rates for disseminated cancer patients. Death rates in patients with disseminated cancer were 44% for emergency surgery and 12% for nonemergent surgery to explore the abdomen; the respective rates were 33% and 6% after bowel-to-bowel fusion, 31% and 4% after removal of the colon, 28% and 10% after removal of the small intestine, 23% and 5% after cholecystectomy, 22% and 7% after partial removal of the colon, and 19% and 9% after colostomy.

The findings should help physicians counsel their patients with disseminated cancer to help them decide whether it’s worth undergoing surgery – especially emergency surgery – given the higher risks of death, Mr. Pesavento said.

Physicians’ attitudes and education: In a separate study, 16 urologists and four primary care physicians who were undergoing surgical training in urology were interviewed about their attitudes regarding end-of-life care for men dying of prostate cancer. They viewed current end-of-life care as shoddily organized and poorly integrated, and said that ideal outcomes should be defined by patients’ own values and preferences, Dr. Jonathan Bergman and his associates reported in a poster presentation.

The physicians said that, ideally, a multidisciplinary team would care for dying patients, but respondents varied in the degree to which they saw themselves participating, reported Dr. Bergman of the University of California, Los Angeles.

The findings suggest that physician education about end-of-life care needs improvement, and that clinicians should be guided to deliver end-of-life care that is patient-centered and congruent with patients’ values, he said.

Dying in the hospital: Among 2,621 patients with solid tumors, those who had contact with a specialist palliative care team more than a month before their deaths were less likely to die in the hospital (16%) than were patients who had later or no contact with the team (20%), J. Brian Cassel, Ph.D., reported in a poster presentation.

Dr. Cassel and his associates analyzed claims data on the last 6 months of life for 3,128 adults with cancer who had at least one contact with the Virginia Commonwealth University cancer center in Richmond between January 2009 and July 2011. The data set included patients who had solid tumors, underwent bone marrow transfer, or had other hematologic malignancies.

The findings provided a snapshot of end-of-life care at the university, where 32% of the cancer patients were admitted to the hospital within their last 30 days of life, 19% had at least one readmission during their last 6 months of life, and 15% died in the hospital. Chemotherapy was given to 11% in their last month of life, and to 7% in their last 2 weeks of life, said Dr. Cassel of the university.

The specialist palliative care team made contact with 28% of patients a median of 6-10 days before the death of patients with bone marrow transfer or other nonhematologic malignancies and a median of 25 days before the death of patients with solid tumors.

Chemotherapy at the end of life: Patients with hematologic malignancies were significantly more likely to get chemotherapy in the last 30 days of life (38%) compared with patients with solid tumors (8%), Dr. Alma Rodriguez and her associates reported in a poster presentation.

The investigators reviewed data on 7,399 patients who received care for a solid tumor or hematological malignancy at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, and died between December 2010 and May 2012. Overall, 14% of patients received chemotherapy within the last 30 days of life.

Of the 1,262 patients who died in the hospital, 44% received chemotherapy within the last 30 days of life, compared with 7% of the 6,137 patients who died in other locations, reported Dr. Rodriguez, professor of medicine at the cancer center.

Chemotherapy within the last 30 days of life was 3 times more likely in patients with metastatic solid tumors, 14 times more likely in patients with nonrelapsed hematologic malignancy, and 36 times more likely in patients with historical or current relapse of hematologic malignancy.

Patients 65 years or older were 38% less likely than were younger patients to get chemotherapy within the last 30 days of life. Patients with one or more comorbidity (most frequently heart failure and coronary artery diseases) were 28% less likely to get chemotherapy within the last 30 days of life as compared with patients without comorbidities.

"As oncologists, we must communicate clearly with our patients about realistic goals of treatment and the likelihood of life-threatening complications of chemotherapy," Dr. Rodriguez said in the poster.

Outpatient palliative care: Dr. Kavitha Ramchandran and her associates at Stanford (Calif.) University studied their system’s electronic medical records to look at the use of palliative care in outpatient clinics from January through September 2012. The number of palliative care contacts with outpatient clinic patients increased from 10 in January to 45 in September. The number of physicians referring outpatients to palliative care increased from 6 in January to 21 in September, she said in a poster presentation.

More than 65% of patients who were referred for palliative care were younger than 65 years, said Dr. Ramchandran of the university. Most patients had only one visit with palliative care (41%) or two visits (23%).

The findings suggest that outpatient palliative care is a growing specialty, she suggested. The data are not mature enough to assess any impact on the quality of end-of-life care or on the efficiency of care, she added.

Dr. Chen and Mr. Pesavento reported having no financial disclosures. Dr. Ramchandran’s study was funded in part by the Stanford Corporate Partners Fund and by various Stanford departments. No financial disclosures were available for the other presenters.

From Hollywood to Washington, care at the end of life increasingly is part of the national conversation.

As more than 70 million baby boomers (Americans born between 1946 and 1964) approach the end of their life spans, the cultural, clinical and socioeconomic impacts of end-of-life care have become high-profile topics. The French film "Amour," which depicts the challenges faced by an octogenarian couple after the wife has a series of strokes, has received an Academy Award Best Picture nomination. The Institute of Medicine will convene a panel of experts on Feb. 22-24 in Washington to examine the state of end-of-life care. The goal of the IOM Committee on Transforming End of Life Care is to produce a consensus report by 2014 to address end-of-life care. "Coordinated, expert, compassionate care for people dying from chronic diseases continues to challenge the American health care system," according to the IOM’s online announcement of the meeting.

In addition, the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care is hosting a National Summit on Advanced Illness Care on Jan. 29-30 in Washington. The Coalition includes a wide range of constituencies including the IOM, the American Heart Association, the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, and the American Geriatrics Society, as well as insurers, health systems, patient advocacy groups, and others.

As policy issues are discussed and begin to take shape, outcomes research focused on end-of-life care will increasingly gain importance. In the area of cancer care, here are some of the highlights of such research presented at a Quality Care Symposium sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology in December 2012 in San Diego.

Palliative care teams: A palliative care team formed by Dr. Allen R. Chen and his associates at Johns Hopkins’s comprehensive cancer center helped change patient and family decisions regarding end-of-life care during a 4-year period and decreased use of intensive or invasive procedures in the last 6 months of life.

The team offered inpatient and clinic consultations and didactic sessions to physicians to improve how they discuss end-of-life issues with patients, plus support for family meetings to discuss and document the goals of care, said Dr. Chen, associate professor of oncology and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

Of the 525 oncology patients who died in the cancer center while hospitalized from 2008 through 2011, the proportion who chose to have do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders, withdrew ICU support, or chose comfort care instead of more aggressive care increased from 81% to 95% over the course of the 4 years, a statistically significant difference, he reported.

The rate of ICU care during patients’ final hospitalizations did not change significantly, but the proportion of patients who were put on mechanical ventilation for more than 14 days decreased significantly from 10% to 5%. These earlier withdrawals of care did not increase the risk of death, Dr. Chen said – the rate of survival to discharge from the oncology ICU did not change significantly.

The investigators now are looking for ways to minimize ICU visits at the end of life, he said. The presence of advanced cancer, being on a cardiac monitor, or needing supplemental oxygen foreshadowed critical illness in patients in the study. "We want to facilitate the difficult discussion" about end-of-life care choices "before critical care is needed," he said. So far, their efforts haven’t resulted in decreased use of ICU services at the end of life.

Minimizing surgical risks: One of the first comprehensive analyses of surgical outcomes in patients with disseminated cancer found that the risk of death increases greatly with emergency surgery.

John Pesavento, a medical student at Creighton University, Omaha, Neb., and his associates analyzed preoperative and postoperative data from the American College of Surgeon’s National Surgical Quality Improvement Program database on move than 147,000 patients who underwent surgical procedures between 2005 and 2008.

Eight of the 10 most common procedures resulted in significantly higher 30-day mortality rates in the cancer patients as compared with the same surgeries in patients who did not have disseminated cancer.

Comparing patients with and without disseminated cancer, 30-day mortality rates were 21% and 15%, respectively, after exploration of the abdomen, 15% and 9% after removal of the small bowel, 11% and 6% after colon removal, 11% and 5% after colostomy, 10% and 5% after partial removal of the colon, 10% and 0.5% after cholecystectomy, 1.8% and 0.9% after repair of a bowel opening, and 1% and 0.1% after mastectomy, he reported. The most common operations in patients with disseminated cancer were partial removal of the colon (in 11%), partial removal of the liver (9%), partial removal of the intestine (5%), and abdominal exploration (5%), he reported in a poster presentation.

When done as emergency procedures, however, 7 of the top 10 surgeries led to significantly higher 30-day mortality rates for disseminated cancer patients. Death rates in patients with disseminated cancer were 44% for emergency surgery and 12% for nonemergent surgery to explore the abdomen; the respective rates were 33% and 6% after bowel-to-bowel fusion, 31% and 4% after removal of the colon, 28% and 10% after removal of the small intestine, 23% and 5% after cholecystectomy, 22% and 7% after partial removal of the colon, and 19% and 9% after colostomy.

The findings should help physicians counsel their patients with disseminated cancer to help them decide whether it’s worth undergoing surgery – especially emergency surgery – given the higher risks of death, Mr. Pesavento said.

Physicians’ attitudes and education: In a separate study, 16 urologists and four primary care physicians who were undergoing surgical training in urology were interviewed about their attitudes regarding end-of-life care for men dying of prostate cancer. They viewed current end-of-life care as shoddily organized and poorly integrated, and said that ideal outcomes should be defined by patients’ own values and preferences, Dr. Jonathan Bergman and his associates reported in a poster presentation.

The physicians said that, ideally, a multidisciplinary team would care for dying patients, but respondents varied in the degree to which they saw themselves participating, reported Dr. Bergman of the University of California, Los Angeles.

The findings suggest that physician education about end-of-life care needs improvement, and that clinicians should be guided to deliver end-of-life care that is patient-centered and congruent with patients’ values, he said.

Dying in the hospital: Among 2,621 patients with solid tumors, those who had contact with a specialist palliative care team more than a month before their deaths were less likely to die in the hospital (16%) than were patients who had later or no contact with the team (20%), J. Brian Cassel, Ph.D., reported in a poster presentation.

Dr. Cassel and his associates analyzed claims data on the last 6 months of life for 3,128 adults with cancer who had at least one contact with the Virginia Commonwealth University cancer center in Richmond between January 2009 and July 2011. The data set included patients who had solid tumors, underwent bone marrow transfer, or had other hematologic malignancies.

The findings provided a snapshot of end-of-life care at the university, where 32% of the cancer patients were admitted to the hospital within their last 30 days of life, 19% had at least one readmission during their last 6 months of life, and 15% died in the hospital. Chemotherapy was given to 11% in their last month of life, and to 7% in their last 2 weeks of life, said Dr. Cassel of the university.

The specialist palliative care team made contact with 28% of patients a median of 6-10 days before the death of patients with bone marrow transfer or other nonhematologic malignancies and a median of 25 days before the death of patients with solid tumors.

Chemotherapy at the end of life: Patients with hematologic malignancies were significantly more likely to get chemotherapy in the last 30 days of life (38%) compared with patients with solid tumors (8%), Dr. Alma Rodriguez and her associates reported in a poster presentation.

The investigators reviewed data on 7,399 patients who received care for a solid tumor or hematological malignancy at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, and died between December 2010 and May 2012. Overall, 14% of patients received chemotherapy within the last 30 days of life.

Of the 1,262 patients who died in the hospital, 44% received chemotherapy within the last 30 days of life, compared with 7% of the 6,137 patients who died in other locations, reported Dr. Rodriguez, professor of medicine at the cancer center.

Chemotherapy within the last 30 days of life was 3 times more likely in patients with metastatic solid tumors, 14 times more likely in patients with nonrelapsed hematologic malignancy, and 36 times more likely in patients with historical or current relapse of hematologic malignancy.

Patients 65 years or older were 38% less likely than were younger patients to get chemotherapy within the last 30 days of life. Patients with one or more comorbidity (most frequently heart failure and coronary artery diseases) were 28% less likely to get chemotherapy within the last 30 days of life as compared with patients without comorbidities.

"As oncologists, we must communicate clearly with our patients about realistic goals of treatment and the likelihood of life-threatening complications of chemotherapy," Dr. Rodriguez said in the poster.

Outpatient palliative care: Dr. Kavitha Ramchandran and her associates at Stanford (Calif.) University studied their system’s electronic medical records to look at the use of palliative care in outpatient clinics from January through September 2012. The number of palliative care contacts with outpatient clinic patients increased from 10 in January to 45 in September. The number of physicians referring outpatients to palliative care increased from 6 in January to 21 in September, she said in a poster presentation.

More than 65% of patients who were referred for palliative care were younger than 65 years, said Dr. Ramchandran of the university. Most patients had only one visit with palliative care (41%) or two visits (23%).

The findings suggest that outpatient palliative care is a growing specialty, she suggested. The data are not mature enough to assess any impact on the quality of end-of-life care or on the efficiency of care, she added.

Dr. Chen and Mr. Pesavento reported having no financial disclosures. Dr. Ramchandran’s study was funded in part by the Stanford Corporate Partners Fund and by various Stanford departments. No financial disclosures were available for the other presenters.

From Hollywood to Washington, care at the end of life increasingly is part of the national conversation.

As more than 70 million baby boomers (Americans born between 1946 and 1964) approach the end of their life spans, the cultural, clinical and socioeconomic impacts of end-of-life care have become high-profile topics. The French film "Amour," which depicts the challenges faced by an octogenarian couple after the wife has a series of strokes, has received an Academy Award Best Picture nomination. The Institute of Medicine will convene a panel of experts on Feb. 22-24 in Washington to examine the state of end-of-life care. The goal of the IOM Committee on Transforming End of Life Care is to produce a consensus report by 2014 to address end-of-life care. "Coordinated, expert, compassionate care for people dying from chronic diseases continues to challenge the American health care system," according to the IOM’s online announcement of the meeting.

In addition, the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care is hosting a National Summit on Advanced Illness Care on Jan. 29-30 in Washington. The Coalition includes a wide range of constituencies including the IOM, the American Heart Association, the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, and the American Geriatrics Society, as well as insurers, health systems, patient advocacy groups, and others.

As policy issues are discussed and begin to take shape, outcomes research focused on end-of-life care will increasingly gain importance. In the area of cancer care, here are some of the highlights of such research presented at a Quality Care Symposium sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology in December 2012 in San Diego.

Palliative care teams: A palliative care team formed by Dr. Allen R. Chen and his associates at Johns Hopkins’s comprehensive cancer center helped change patient and family decisions regarding end-of-life care during a 4-year period and decreased use of intensive or invasive procedures in the last 6 months of life.

The team offered inpatient and clinic consultations and didactic sessions to physicians to improve how they discuss end-of-life issues with patients, plus support for family meetings to discuss and document the goals of care, said Dr. Chen, associate professor of oncology and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

Of the 525 oncology patients who died in the cancer center while hospitalized from 2008 through 2011, the proportion who chose to have do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders, withdrew ICU support, or chose comfort care instead of more aggressive care increased from 81% to 95% over the course of the 4 years, a statistically significant difference, he reported.

The rate of ICU care during patients’ final hospitalizations did not change significantly, but the proportion of patients who were put on mechanical ventilation for more than 14 days decreased significantly from 10% to 5%. These earlier withdrawals of care did not increase the risk of death, Dr. Chen said – the rate of survival to discharge from the oncology ICU did not change significantly.

The investigators now are looking for ways to minimize ICU visits at the end of life, he said. The presence of advanced cancer, being on a cardiac monitor, or needing supplemental oxygen foreshadowed critical illness in patients in the study. "We want to facilitate the difficult discussion" about end-of-life care choices "before critical care is needed," he said. So far, their efforts haven’t resulted in decreased use of ICU services at the end of life.

Minimizing surgical risks: One of the first comprehensive analyses of surgical outcomes in patients with disseminated cancer found that the risk of death increases greatly with emergency surgery.

John Pesavento, a medical student at Creighton University, Omaha, Neb., and his associates analyzed preoperative and postoperative data from the American College of Surgeon’s National Surgical Quality Improvement Program database on move than 147,000 patients who underwent surgical procedures between 2005 and 2008.

Eight of the 10 most common procedures resulted in significantly higher 30-day mortality rates in the cancer patients as compared with the same surgeries in patients who did not have disseminated cancer.

Comparing patients with and without disseminated cancer, 30-day mortality rates were 21% and 15%, respectively, after exploration of the abdomen, 15% and 9% after removal of the small bowel, 11% and 6% after colon removal, 11% and 5% after colostomy, 10% and 5% after partial removal of the colon, 10% and 0.5% after cholecystectomy, 1.8% and 0.9% after repair of a bowel opening, and 1% and 0.1% after mastectomy, he reported. The most common operations in patients with disseminated cancer were partial removal of the colon (in 11%), partial removal of the liver (9%), partial removal of the intestine (5%), and abdominal exploration (5%), he reported in a poster presentation.

When done as emergency procedures, however, 7 of the top 10 surgeries led to significantly higher 30-day mortality rates for disseminated cancer patients. Death rates in patients with disseminated cancer were 44% for emergency surgery and 12% for nonemergent surgery to explore the abdomen; the respective rates were 33% and 6% after bowel-to-bowel fusion, 31% and 4% after removal of the colon, 28% and 10% after removal of the small intestine, 23% and 5% after cholecystectomy, 22% and 7% after partial removal of the colon, and 19% and 9% after colostomy.

The findings should help physicians counsel their patients with disseminated cancer to help them decide whether it’s worth undergoing surgery – especially emergency surgery – given the higher risks of death, Mr. Pesavento said.

Physicians’ attitudes and education: In a separate study, 16 urologists and four primary care physicians who were undergoing surgical training in urology were interviewed about their attitudes regarding end-of-life care for men dying of prostate cancer. They viewed current end-of-life care as shoddily organized and poorly integrated, and said that ideal outcomes should be defined by patients’ own values and preferences, Dr. Jonathan Bergman and his associates reported in a poster presentation.

The physicians said that, ideally, a multidisciplinary team would care for dying patients, but respondents varied in the degree to which they saw themselves participating, reported Dr. Bergman of the University of California, Los Angeles.

The findings suggest that physician education about end-of-life care needs improvement, and that clinicians should be guided to deliver end-of-life care that is patient-centered and congruent with patients’ values, he said.

Dying in the hospital: Among 2,621 patients with solid tumors, those who had contact with a specialist palliative care team more than a month before their deaths were less likely to die in the hospital (16%) than were patients who had later or no contact with the team (20%), J. Brian Cassel, Ph.D., reported in a poster presentation.

Dr. Cassel and his associates analyzed claims data on the last 6 months of life for 3,128 adults with cancer who had at least one contact with the Virginia Commonwealth University cancer center in Richmond between January 2009 and July 2011. The data set included patients who had solid tumors, underwent bone marrow transfer, or had other hematologic malignancies.

The findings provided a snapshot of end-of-life care at the university, where 32% of the cancer patients were admitted to the hospital within their last 30 days of life, 19% had at least one readmission during their last 6 months of life, and 15% died in the hospital. Chemotherapy was given to 11% in their last month of life, and to 7% in their last 2 weeks of life, said Dr. Cassel of the university.

The specialist palliative care team made contact with 28% of patients a median of 6-10 days before the death of patients with bone marrow transfer or other nonhematologic malignancies and a median of 25 days before the death of patients with solid tumors.

Chemotherapy at the end of life: Patients with hematologic malignancies were significantly more likely to get chemotherapy in the last 30 days of life (38%) compared with patients with solid tumors (8%), Dr. Alma Rodriguez and her associates reported in a poster presentation.

The investigators reviewed data on 7,399 patients who received care for a solid tumor or hematological malignancy at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, and died between December 2010 and May 2012. Overall, 14% of patients received chemotherapy within the last 30 days of life.

Of the 1,262 patients who died in the hospital, 44% received chemotherapy within the last 30 days of life, compared with 7% of the 6,137 patients who died in other locations, reported Dr. Rodriguez, professor of medicine at the cancer center.

Chemotherapy within the last 30 days of life was 3 times more likely in patients with metastatic solid tumors, 14 times more likely in patients with nonrelapsed hematologic malignancy, and 36 times more likely in patients with historical or current relapse of hematologic malignancy.

Patients 65 years or older were 38% less likely than were younger patients to get chemotherapy within the last 30 days of life. Patients with one or more comorbidity (most frequently heart failure and coronary artery diseases) were 28% less likely to get chemotherapy within the last 30 days of life as compared with patients without comorbidities.

"As oncologists, we must communicate clearly with our patients about realistic goals of treatment and the likelihood of life-threatening complications of chemotherapy," Dr. Rodriguez said in the poster.

Outpatient palliative care: Dr. Kavitha Ramchandran and her associates at Stanford (Calif.) University studied their system’s electronic medical records to look at the use of palliative care in outpatient clinics from January through September 2012. The number of palliative care contacts with outpatient clinic patients increased from 10 in January to 45 in September. The number of physicians referring outpatients to palliative care increased from 6 in January to 21 in September, she said in a poster presentation.

More than 65% of patients who were referred for palliative care were younger than 65 years, said Dr. Ramchandran of the university. Most patients had only one visit with palliative care (41%) or two visits (23%).

The findings suggest that outpatient palliative care is a growing specialty, she suggested. The data are not mature enough to assess any impact on the quality of end-of-life care or on the efficiency of care, she added.

Dr. Chen and Mr. Pesavento reported having no financial disclosures. Dr. Ramchandran’s study was funded in part by the Stanford Corporate Partners Fund and by various Stanford departments. No financial disclosures were available for the other presenters.