Journal of palliative medicine
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Background: Epithelioid hemangioendothelioma (EHE) patients can experience severe pain. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, including ketorolac tromethamine, can effectively treat cancer-related pain, provide an opioid-sparing effect, and may be particularly effective for EHE pain. There are limited data describing prolonged (>5 days) continuous intravenous (IV) ketorolac infusion for cancer-related pain and no data on its use in EHE. ⋯ With thorough monitoring, the patient was discharged on continuous IV ketorolac infusion at 3 mg/hour (72 mg/day). Infusion continued for 79 days without clinical or laboratory evidence of ketorolac toxicity. Conclusion: Ketorolac tromethamine as a long-term infusion is a potentially viable analgesic for patients with intractable EHE-related pain unresponsive to standard therapies.
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Pediatric palliative care (PPC) is different from palliative care (PC) for adults. However, conceptualizing PPC remains cumbersome due to the high heterogeneity of often rare diseases, the high diversity of disease trajectories, and the particular difficulty to predict the future of an individual, severely ill child. This article aims to provide an overview and critical reflection of different aspects of prognostication in children with PC needs. This includes different diseases from neurology to oncology, from the unborn baby to the young adult, new approaches in treatment, advance care planning, and, most important, communication with the affected child as well as parents.
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Introduction: The Patient Dignity Inventory (PDI) is a reliable screening instrument for a variety of problems (physical, existential, and social) that affect the dignity of patients during their end of life. The PDI has been translated into several different languages and has been validated in different settings. As such, it is important to validate the instrument in patients with cancer in Mexico to assess dignity in this population. ⋯ Conclusions: The Mexican version of the PDI shows adequate psychometric properties in patients with cancer. We suggest the use of PDI-Mx in clinical care and research. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board and Ethics Committee with numbers (016/063/CPI) and (CEI/1115/16) respectively.
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Background: There are few studies examining the usage and utility of patient portals among seriously ill and end-of-life populations and their caregivers. Objective: The aim of this study was to describe portal user characteristics among patients and their caregivers (proxy login) at two time points: (1) the 12 months following an electronic medical record flag for serious illness and (2) during the last 12 months of life. Methods: A retrospective cohort analysis of Kaiser Permanente Colorado (KPCO) patients with serious illness, as defined by Kaiser Permanente's prognostic algorithm, and their proxy caregivers was performed for the two time periods. ⋯ Patients who were older, female, non-White, and healthier were less likely to use the portal. Conclusions: In comparison with overall KPCO portal use and recent patient portal studies examining use patterns, patient portal use was high among patients flagged with serious illness and nearing the end of life. However, because use was associated with age, gender, and race, addressing barriers to portal adoption among underserved populations and caregiver proxies is key to better leveraging patient portal systems for palliative and end-of-life care.
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Background: Meeting the needs of seriously ill SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) patients requires novel models of deploying health social workers (SWs) to expand the palliative care workforce. To inform such expansion, understanding the current state of health SWs' core palliative care skills is necessary. ⋯ Health SWs reported a "moderate improvement" in the use of three skills: "identify a medical decision maker," "assess prognostic understanding," and "coordinate care." There was "minimal decrease" to "no improvement" to "minimal improvement" in competence and confidence of skill use. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that educational initiatives can improve health SWs' use of core palliative care skills.