Impact of the Regional Palliative Care Pathway on Emergency Room Visits and Hospitalizations.

Background/aim: To explore the effect of palliative care (PC) pathway including home care and end-of-life care beds in the community hospitals supported by a PC unit in the secondary hospital on ER visits and hospitalizations.

Patients And Methods: Patients with advanced cancer and no further oncologic therapies who visited the ER of the Hyvinkää hospital before (2009) and after (2015) the establishment of the PC pathway were evaluated.

Results: A total of 112 patients visited the ER in both years, but revisits decreased from 59% to 38% (p<0.

The impact of the duration of the palliative care period on cancer patients with regard to the use of hospital services and the place of death: a retrospective cohort study.

Background: In order to avoid unnecessary use of hospital services at the end-of-life, palliative care should be initiated early enough in order to have sufficient time to initiate and carry out good quality advance care planning (ACP). This single center study assesses the impact of the PC decision and its timing on the use of hospital services at EOL and the place of death.

Methods: A randomly chosen cohort of 992 cancer patients treated in a tertiary hospital between Jan 2013 -Dec 2014, who were deceased by the end of 2014, were selected from the total number of 2737 identified from the hospital database.

Assessing the utilization of the decision to implement a palliative goal for the treatment of cancer patients during the last year of life at Helsinki University Hospital: a historic cohort study.

To avoid aggressive treatments at the end-of-life and to provide palliative care (PC), physicians need to terminate futile anti-cancer treatments and define the palliative goal of the treatment in time. This single center study assesses the practices used to make the decision that leads to treatment with a palliative goal, i.e.

End-of-life decisions guiding the palliative care of cancer patients visiting emergency department in South Western Finland: a retrospective cohort study.

Background: Until recently, palliative care (PC) resources in Finland have been sparse. To meet the increasing need for PC an end-of-life (EOL) care project has been ongoing in South Western Finland since 2012, and in 2015, a weekday palliative outpatient clinic was established in Turku University Hospital (TUH). The aim of this study was to explore the effect of the project and the PC clinic on the management practices of EOL cancer patients attending the Emergency Department (ED) of TUH from 2013 to 2016.

End-of-life chemotherapy use at a Finnish university hospital: a retrospective cohort study.

Background: Recent trends in the end-of-life (EOL) cancer care have suggested that the levels of treatment are becoming more aggressive. The aim of this single-center study was to evaluate the time from the last intravenous (IV) chemotherapy treatment to death and identify factors correlating with treatment closer to death.

Material And Methods: The study included all patients diagnosed with cancer at Turku University Central Hospital between the years 2005 and 2013 (N = 38,982) who received IV chemotherapy during the last year of life (N = 3285).

Assessing the utilization of radiotherapy near end of life at a Finnish University Hospital: a retrospective cohort study.

Background: Palliative radiotherapy can improve quality of life for cancer patients during the last months of life. However, very short life expectancy may devastate the benefit of the treatment. This single center study assesses the utilization of radiotherapy during the last weeks of life.