An Observational Study of the Prevalence of Patients Requiring Palliative Care in French Anti-cancer Centers.

NCT ID: NCT02479061

Last Updated: 2017-08-21

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Total Enrollment: 846 participants
• Study Classification: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2015-06-30
• Study Completion Date: 2017-06-30

Brief Summary

The purpose of this observational study is to determine the proportion of patients with a score greater than 3/10 to the questionnaire PALLIA-10.

This questionnaire is a tool provided by the French Society for Palliative Cares, aiming at helping the providers of care to identify patients who would require palliative cares.

According to the notice of the questionnaire, patients with a score greater than 3 would be taken in charge by a palliative care team. Considerong the 10 itmes of this questionnaire, it seems that a large majority of patients would have a score greater than 3 in the context of anti cancer centers.

To date, palliative teams are not designed to take in charge such an amount of patients.

Detailed Description

Continuous improvement of therapeutics helped to lengthen different stages of natural cancer evolution. Advanced cancer patients are followed-up even longer; therefore there is a need to increase palliative care resources. A global therapeutic approach is being set up gradually thanks to specialized supportive care team. This global approach includes therapeutics and life condition improvement of the patient and his family.

In France, only 2 anti-cancer centers have a palliative care unit. The 16 other centers design hospital beds for palliative care and work with mobile palliative care teams.

According to latest studies with high level of evidence, International oncology societies published good practices guidelines supporting the need of early palliative cares for patients with metastatic cancer.

In 2010, Temel et al. demonstrated early palliative care effectiveness. Indeed, early palliative care led to significant improvements in both quality of life (score on the FACT-L scale: 98.0 vs. 91.5; p=0.03) and mood (depressive symptoms: 16% vs. 38%, P=0.01). Moreover median survival was longer among patients receiving early palliative care (11.6 months vs. 8.9 months, p=0.02). Analysis showed that patients assigned to early palliative care stopped chemotherapy earlier, had a higher enrollment rate in palliative care units and less depressive symptoms when cares were provided by both oncologists and palliative care teams.

Other specific scales support efficiency of early palliative care on quality of life. Early palliative care increases also satisfaction of the cares. Therefore, these results illustrate the need for an early integration of palliative care in France; and this approach is recommended in the third national plan against cancer.

Despite efficacy data, no high international consensus exists on a screening score for patients requiring early palliative care. Some teams therefore use prognostic factors like Barbot score.

Confronted with such difficulties, the French Society for Counselling and Palliative Care create a score (PALLIA-10) with 10 items on personal situation of the patient and his disease. This score helps medical staffs to direct patients to a specialized team as soon as it is > 3/10.

PALLI-10 score is not optimized because of the large number of patients with a score > 3 in the French anti-cancer centers. In 2014, a team from Centre Fraçois Baclesse (Caen, France) showed that nearly 65% of hospitalized patients in medicine department has a score PALLIA-10 > 3/10. Today, mobile palliative care teams are too small to manage so many patients.

First, it is important to evaluate the prevalence of these patients in France. Description of patients hospitalized in a Center for the Treatment of Cancers should help us to describe the characteristics of patients requiring cares provided by a mobile palliative care team.

Conditions

Neoplasms; Oncology

Study Design

• Observational Model Type: OTHER
• Study Time Perspective: CROSS_SECTIONAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• 18-year old or older
• Hospitalized in a conventionnal medical service, including radiotherapy, brachytherapy, palliative care units.

Exclusion Criteria

• Patient hospitalized in an out-patient service, surgery unit, weekly units

• Minimum Eligible Age: 18 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Sponsors

Centre Leon Berard

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR

Principal Investigators

Gisele CHVETZOFF, MD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Centre Leon Berard

Locations

Institut de Cancérologie de l'Ouest

Angers, , France

Institut Bergonié

Bordeaux, , France

Centre François Baclesse

Caen, , France

Centre Jean PERRIN

Clermont-Ferrand, , France

Centre Oscar Lambret

Lille, , France

Centre Léon Bérard

Lyon, , France

Institut Paoli Calmettes

Marseille, , France

Institut Régional du Cancer de Montpellier

Montpellier, , France

Centre Antoine Lacassagne

Nice, , France

Institut Curie

Paris - Saint Cloud, , France

Institut Jean GODINOT

Reims, , France

Centre Eugène Marquis

Rennes, , France

Centre Paul Strauss

Strasbourg, , France

Institut Universitaire du Cancer de Toulouse Oncopole

Toulouse, , France

Institut de Cancérologie de Lorraine

Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy, , France

Countries

France

Other Identifiers

PREPA-10

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id