Publications by authors named "Patrick S Chaftari"

Pain remains an undertreated complication of cancer, with poor pain control decreasing patients’ quality of life. Traditionally, patients presenting to an emergency department with pain have only had two dispositions available to them: hospitalization or discharge. A third emerging healthcare environment, the emergency department observation unit (EDOU), affords patients access to a hospital’s resources without hospitalization.

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Background: Delirium, poor performance status, and dyspnea predict short survival in the palliative care setting.

Objective: Our goal was to determine whether these three conditions, which we refer to as a "triple threat," also predict mortality among patients with advanced cancers in the emergency department (ED).

Methods: The study sample included 243 randomly selected, clinically stable patients with advanced cancer who presented to our ED.

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Background: The accurate detection of cancer-associated venous thromboembolism (VTE) can avoid unnecessary diagnostic imaging or laboratory tests.

Objective: We sought to determine clinical and cancer-related risk factors of VTE that can be used as predictors for oncology patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) with suspected VTE.

Methods: We retrospectively analyzed all consecutive patients who presented with suspicion of VTE to The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center ED between January 1, 2009, and January 1, 2013.

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Purpose: Consultation to palliative care (PC) services in hospitalized patients is frequently late after admission to a hospital. The purpose of this study is to examine the association of in-hospital mortality and timing of palliative care consultation in cancer patients admitted through the emergency department (ED) of MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Methods: Institutional databases were queried for unique medical admissions over a period of 1 year.

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Immune checkpoint inhibitors are a new class of anticancer drugs recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of various malignancies. Pembrolizumab is an immune checkpoint inhibitor that targets the programmed cell death protein-1 (PD-1) receptor and blocks its interaction with programmed cell death ligand-1 (PD-L1) and programmed cell death ligand-2 (PD-L2). Pembrolizumab was first approved by the FDA in 2014 for the treatment of advanced melanoma and is currently approved for use in non-small cell lung cancer and several other neoplasms.

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Study Objective: Cancer immunotherapy is evolving rapidly and is transforming cancer care. During the last decade, immune checkpoint therapies have been developed to enhance the immune response; however, specific adverse effects related to autoimmunity are increasingly apparent. This study aims to fill the knowledge gap related to the spectrum of immune-related adverse effects among cancer patients visiting emergency departments (EDs).

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Purpose: The identification of patients at high risk for poor outcomes may allow for earlier palliative care and prevent futile interventions. We examined the association of presenting symptoms on risk of intensive care unit (ICU) admission and hospital death among patients with cancer admitted through an emergency department (ED).

Methods: We queried MD Anderson Cancer Center databases for all patients who visited the ED in 2010.

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