Are patients with advanced colon cancer availing of palliative care services?: Findings from a high-volume urban center.

Abstract

e23101 Background: Palliative care is integral to cancer treatment. Our goal was to investigate the factors associated with palliative care service involvement for hospitalized colon cancer patients. Methods: We carried out a retrospective study of all colon cancer patients diagnosed and hospitalized at our institution from 1/1/2010 through 12/31/2017. We identified 667 patients, including 370 women (55%). We used Fisher’s exact test to find statistically significant differences in proportions of patients seen by the palliative care service based on sex, race, cancer stage, surgical intervention, and chemotherapy administration. Results: We found that 561/667 (84%) colon cancer patients were not evaluated by the palliative care service (including 301 women; 54%) and that overall they were unlikely to have been evaluated regardless of sex, race, cancer stage, or chemotherapy (Table). Patients who underwent surgery were equally likely to be seen by the team as those who did not have surgery. We found that 53% (150/285) of patients with Stage III and IV disease received neither chemotherapy nor palliative care evaluation. Conclusions: The palliative care service is underutilized at our facility even when patients with advanced stage disease are hospitalized. Even when patients are not on chemotherapy, the palliative care service remains uninvolved. This may be due to inadequate staffing, misconceptions that providers and patients have about palliative care, or lack of coordination between inpatient and outpatient providers. We did not find that palliative care service utilization led to a statistically significant difference in survival, but their involvement is critical to helping address patients’ goals of care and symptoms. It is also instrumental to improving cancer patients’ quality of life both in the outpatient and inpatient setting, regardless of cancer stage or survival, as in our patient population. More effort is needed to include the palliative care service in the care of patients with advanced colon cancer. [Table: see text]