Specialist palliative and end-of-life care for patients with cancer and SARS-CoV-2 infection: a European perspective.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Specialist palliative care team (SPCT) involvement has been shown to improve symptom control and end-of-life care for patients with cancer, but little is known as to how these have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we report SPCT involvement during the first wave of the pandemic and compare outcomes for patients with cancer who received and did not receive SPCT input from multiple European cancer centres.

Methods

From the OnCovid repository (N = 1318), we analysed cancer patients aged ⩾18 diagnosed with COVID-19 between 26 February and 22 June 2020 who had complete specialist palliative care team data (SPCT+ referred; SPCT- not referred).

Results

Of 555 eligible patients, 317 were male (57.1%), with a median age of 70 years (IQR 20). At C

SUBMITTER: Soosaipillai G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8419540 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature