Systematic Symptom Reporting by Pediatric Palliative Care Patients with Cancer: A Preliminary Report

Autor: Diane Liu, Eduardo Bruera, Janet L. Williams, Seyedeh Dibaj, Maira Charone, Sarah Mills, Kevin Madden
Rok vydání: 2019
Předmět:
Zdroj: J Palliat Med
ISSN: 1557-7740
1096-6218
DOI: 10.1089/jpm.2018.0545
Popis: Background: Systematic symptom assessment is not a standard of care in children with cancer. Many well-known symptom assessment tools are lengthy or difficult to integrate into a daily pediatric palliative care practice. We created a series of brief and simple questions to be systematically given to children and their caregivers. Objective: The primary objective was to determine the percentage of eligible children and caregivers exposed to the questions that were able to complete the assessment. Secondary objectives included documenting the symptom burden at the time of consultation, evaluating the level of agreement in symptom reporting between children and caregivers, as well as between children/caregivers and the referring medical team. Design: A series of systematic questions were presented to all caregivers (if present) and children who were seven years of age or older at the time of initial consultation with pediatric palliative care. Results: One hundred twenty-two consecutive children/caregiver dyads were given the survey. One hundred seven of 108 (99%) eligible caregivers and 83 of 97 (86%) eligible children completed the survey. Lack of appetite (child—72/83, 87%; caregiver—89/107, 83%) and pain (child—71/83, 86%; caregiver—86/107, 80%) were the most commonly reported symptoms. Caregivers reported irritability (p = 0.005) and nervousness (p
Databáze: OpenAIRE