Surgical palliative care consultations over time in relationship to systemwide frailty screening.

ABSTRACT:

Importance

The need for integrating palliative care into surgical services has been established within the surgical literature. The ability to effectively screen, obtain an appropriately timed consultation, and determine the effect of consultation remains problematic.

Objective

To examine surgical palliative care consultations over time and their relationship to the initiation and implementation of a systemwide frailty-screening program.

Design, setting, and participants

We reviewed all surgical palliative care consultations performed between January 1, 2006, and August 31, 2013, and abstracted the referring service (medicine/surgery), date of surgery (if any), date of death (if any), and all variables required to calculate a frailty score using the risk analysis inde

SUBMITTER: Ernst KF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4603652 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature