Background: Children with terminal cancer and their families describe a preference for home-based end-of-life care. Inadequate support outside of the hospital is a limiting factor in home location feasibility, particularly in rural regions lacking pediatric-trained hospice providers.
Methods: The purpose of this longitudinal palliative telehealth support pilot study was to explore physical and emotional symptom burden and family impact assessments for children with terminal cancer receiving home based-hospice care. Each child received standard of care home-based hospice care from an adult-trained rural hospice team with the inclusion of telehealth pediatric palliative care visits at a scheduled minimum of every 14 days.
Results: Eleven children (mean age 11.9 years) received pediatric palliative telehealth visits a minimum of every 14 days, with an average of 4.8 additional telehealth visits initiated by the family. Average time from enrollment to death was 21.6 days (range 4-95). Children self-reported higher physical symptom prevalence than parents or hospice nurses perceived the child was experiencing at time of hospice enrollment with underrecognition of the child's emotional burden. At the time of hospice enrollment, family impact was reported by family caregivers as 46.4/100 (SD 18.7), with noted trend of improved family function while receiving home hospice care with telehealth support. All children remained at home for end-of-life care.
Conclusion: Pediatric palliative care telehealth combined with adult-trained rural hospice providers may be utilized to support pediatric oncology patients and their family caregivers as part of longitudinal home-based hospice care.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/pbc.28921 | DOI Listing |
Am J Geriatr Psychiatry
January 2025
Division of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine (PK), Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
Objective: To test the efficacy of Problem Adaptation Therapy for Pain (PATH-Pain) versus Usual Care (UC) in reducing pain-related disability, pain intensity, and depression among older adults with chronic pain and negative emotions.
Design: RCT assessing the between-group differences during the acute (0-10 weeks) and follow-up (weeks 11-24) phase of treatment.
Setting: A geriatrics primary care site.
ESMO Open
January 2025
Evaluative Epidemiology Unit, Department of Epidemiology and Data Science, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy.
Health networking is in principle a formidable instrument to address many challenges posed by cancer, one of the two most common and most lethal non-communicable chronic diseases. The European Union (EU)'s Beating Cancer Plan foresaw the addition of new health networks to the four already existing European Reference Networks on rare cancers: the Network of Comprehensive Cancer Centres and several networks of expertise (NoEs), which will be shortly deployed on items as complex and poor-prognosis cancers, palliative care, survivorship, personalised primary and secondary prevention, omic technologies, hi-tech medical resources, and cancers in adolescents and young adults. The community of experts of the EU Joint Action, due to build such NoEs, has drafted this 'green paper', incorporating 13 open questions, in an effort to foster discussion on some open questions about health networking on cancer in the EU.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPediatr Transplant
March 2025
Department of Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Background: Some adult transplant surgeons consider transplant to be contraindicated in patients receiving palliative care (PC). Little is known about pediatric transplant surgeons' attitudes toward PC. We sought to ascertain pediatric kidney transplant surgeons' perspectives regarding the routine integration of PC for children with chronic kidney disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Asthma Allergy
January 2025
Department of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Fuzhou Children's Hospital of Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, Fujian, People's Republic of China.
Background: Cow's milk protein allergy (CMPA) is a prevalent food allergy in early childhood, significantly impacting the quality of life for affected children. Current palliative measures, such as specialized formula milk, offer temporary relief but are costly and fail to address the underlying issue. Thus, there is a critical need to better understand CMPA and explore new treatment options.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPalliat Care Soc Pract
January 2025
Center for Crisis Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen, Postbox 7807, Bergen 5020, Norway.
Background: Municipality-based pediatric palliative care (PPC) is recommended to promote the quality of life for the child and family by enabling them to stay at home as much as possible. However, municipality-based PPC presents complex challenges and places significant demands on healthcare professionals. Yet, it remains an underexplored field.
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