Clinical governance benchmarking issues in oncology: aggressiveness of cancer care and consumption of strong opioids. A single-center experience on measurement of quality of care.

Aims And Background: The aggressiveness of cancer care near the end of life and the consumption of opioids are potential indicators of quality of care in palliative and end-of-life settings. The purpose of this article is to present a retrospective analysis regarding these themes and the adopted procedures to improve quality of care.

Methods: We evaluated all cancer patients treated and deceased during 2008 and considered those who died and received any antiblastic therapy within 14 and 30 days prior to death.