Quality of life for patients with advanced gastrointestinal cancer randomised to early specialised home-based palliative care: the ALLAN trial.

Background: The primary aim of specialised palliative care (SPC) is to improve the quality of life (QoL) for patients with a high symptom burden from a life-threatening disease. This randomised study aimed to assess the QoL impact of early integration of SPC alongside tumour-specific palliative treatment in patients with gastrointestinal (GI) cancers.

Methods: We randomly assigned ambulatory patients with advanced GI cancer to early integration of SPC and palliative tumour-specific treatment or tumour-specific treatment alone.