Supporting the patients with advanced cancer and their family caregivers: what are their palliative care needs?

Background: The impact and consequences of cancer on the patients and their family caregivers (FCs) are closely intertwined. Caregivers' burdens can be increased due to the patients' unmet needs and unresolved problems. Additionally, the caregivers' unmet needs may adversely affect their own well-being and the patients' health outcomes.

Validation of the Comprehensive Needs Assessment Tool in Patients with Advanced Cancer.

Aims: The 59-item Comprehensive Needs Assessment Tool (CNAT) for cancer patients is an English language survey developed in South Korea. The objective of this study was to validate the English version of CNAT in advanced cancer patients in Singapore.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional survey where advanced cancer patients completed the CNAT in English.

An 11-Year Study of Home Hospice Service Trends in Singapore from 2000 to 2010.

Background: Hospice care is most appropriate when a patient no longer benefits from curative treatment and has limited life expectancy. These patients may suffer from any type of life-limiting illness, including end-stage cancer, end-stage heart disease, end-stage renal failure, AIDS, and Alzheimer's disease, among other illnesses. Patients are managed on their pain and symptoms and home hospice care manages these patients in the comfort of their own home, enabling patients to spend their last days with dignity and have a good quality of life.

A Quantitative Framework Classifying the Palliative Care Workforce into Specialist and Generalist Components.

Background: Early referral to palliative care (PC) services has been shown to improve quality of life in advanced cancer. However, limitations in trained PC workforce raise issues with the sustainability of delivering PC with early PC referral. Classifying PC into generalist and specialist components could be one approach to sustainable PC delivery models but a quantitative guide for this classification is presently lacking in the literature.

Quality of life domains important and relevant to family caregivers of advanced cancer patients in an Asian population: a qualitative study.

Purpose: This study aims to identify domains of quality of life (QoL) that are culturally relevant to Chinese caregivers of advanced cancer patients in Singapore and to evaluate content adequacy of currently available instruments for use in the target population.

Methods: English- and Chinese-speaking caregivers of advanced cancer patients receiving care under a tertiary cancer center and/or a community hospice home care/day care provider were recruited for in-depth interviews. The interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis.

A non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphism in an OPRM1 splice variant is associated with fentanyl-induced emesis in women undergoing minor gynaecological surgery.

Background: Fentanyl-induced emesis (FIE) is a distressing adverse effect in the postoperative setting. The genetic basis of FIE remains largely unknown, therefore, we examined whether it was associated with specific genetic variants of OPRM1, the gene encoding the main receptor target of fentanyl.

Methods: In this prospective case-control study, 193 women undergoing gynaecological surgery under a standardized anaesthetic with a low emetogenic risk were enrolled.