Effects of home-based specialized palliative care and dyadic psychological intervention on caregiver burden: results from a randomized controlled trial.

The Domus study, a randomized controlled trial (RCT), evaluated the effect of home-based specialized palliative care (SPC) reinforced with a psychological intervention for the patient-caregiver dyad on increasing advanced cancer patients' time spent at home, as opposed to hospitalized, and the number of home deaths. As palliative care extends to include support for patients' families and may thus assist caregivers and decrease demands on them, in this study we evaluated a secondary outcome, caregiver burden. Patients with incurable cancer and their caregivers were randomized (1:1) to care as usual or home-based SPC.