Managing end-of-life care (EoL) is always emotionally taxing. Honest discussions about prognosis and EoL decision-making are often delayed due to questions about the legal competence of adolescents and young adults (AYA) to make decisions for…
BACKGROUND: The most common, debilitating morbidity of sickle cell disease (SCD) is vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC) pain. Although guidelines exist for its management, they are generally not well-followed, and research in other pediatric diseases has…
BACKGROUND: The aim of the study was to make a comprehensive inventory of the physical, psychological, and social symptoms of children with cancer and their parents during the palliative phase and the extent to which health professionals address…
Background Malignant pleural effusion (MPE) and ascites (MA) negatively impact quality of life of palliative patients. Treatment options are limited. This study's purpose is to examine the experience with indwelling tunneled catheters (ITCs) for…
BACKGROUND: The prevalence of malnutrition in children with cancer ranges between 8% and 60%. Malnutrition is strongly associated with the nature of treatment and increases an individual's risk of infection. Clinical studies have suggested that…
BACKGROUND: FAmily CEntered (FACE) Advance Care Planning helps family decision makers to understand and honor patients' preferences for future health care, if patients cannot communicate. Spiritual well-being is a key domain of pediatric oncology…
Pediatric patients between the ages of 12 months and 17 years with a confirmed malignancy who were scheduled to receive aprepitant as part of triple therapy antiemetic prophylaxis for a cycle of moderately- or highly emetogenic chemotherapy were…
BACKGROUND: Hospice is an important provider of end of life care. Adult minorities are less likely to enroll on hospice; little is known regarding the prevalence of pediatric hospice use or the characteristics of its users. Our primary objective was…
BACKGROUND: Although sleep and physical activity often are impaired among adult cancer patients, there is limited data among pediatric oncology populations. We conducted a prospective study to investigate the relationship between physical activity…
BACKGROUND: Pediatric patients experience significant symptoms during cancer treatment. Symptom management is frequently inadequate. We studied perceptions of pediatric oncology care providers regarding early integration of palliative care (PC) for…
OBJECTIVE: To describe medication utilization patterns by pediatric inpatients with cancer during their last week of life. METHODS: This retrospective study used data from the Vizient Clinical Database/Resource Manager, a national compilation of…
BACKGROUND: The death of a child is a devastating event that results in profound grief and significant psychosocial and physical morbidities in parents. The parental grief journey is a complex phenomenon necessitating the utilization of newer models…
Background: In pediatric hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), the end-of-life (EOL) phase and the loss of the child is often characterized by a sudden deterioration of the child following a period of intensive curative treatment. This…
BACKGROUND: Parents' perceptions of the quality of information communicated by their child's oncologist about the child's cancer are not well understood. PROCEDURE: We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 194 parents of children with cancer…
BACKGROUND: Current options for location of end-of-life (EOL) care for children with cancer include home, hospital, and freestanding pediatric hospice (FSPH). However, access to these options varies greatly depending on geographical location. We…
BACKGROUND: Palliative care is an important component of pediatric oncology care, especially for children who will not be cured of their disease. However, barriers remain to integration of this service. One barrier is the perception that it indicates…
Background With the transition of care of cancer patients from the hospital to the home setting, parents are largely responsible for children's pain management. Children's cancer pain is undermanaged, yet, there is little empirical data on the…
BACKGROUND: Relapsed childhood acute myeloid leukemia (AML) outcomes have not been documented in resource-limited settings. We examined survival after relapse for children with AML (non-APML) and acute promyelocytic leukemia (APML) in Central…
BACKGROUND: Methadone is frequently used in the treatment of adults with advanced cancer. A criticism of relevant research is the use of single or fixed doses, which does not reflect use in clinical practice. Literature about use of methadone in the…
OBJECTIVE: Despite calls to increase prognosis communication for adolescents with cancer, limited research has examined their perceptions of prognosis as compared with their parents. We assessed adolescents' understanding of their prognosis relative…
BACKGROUND: The sharp division between curative cancer therapy and palliative care results in the late introduction of palliative care and a high incidence of suffering in children with cancer. We established a Palliative Care Unit (PCU) that is…
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…
Background To examine pediatric oncologists' grief reactions to patient death, and the impact patient death has on their personal and professional lives. Procedure The grounded theory method was used. Data was collected between March 2012 and July…
BACKGROUND: We evaluated the efficacy of gemcitabine and docetaxel chemotherapy (GEM + DOC) in children and adolescents with recurrent or refractory osteosarcoma. METHODS: Data of 28 patients (20 male, 8 female) who received gemcitabine (675 or 900…
BACKGROUND: Cancer-related fatigue is one of the most pervasive and debilitating side-effects of cancer treatment and adolescents consistently rate cancer-related fatigue as one of the most distressing aspects of treatment. Because fatigue is also…
BACKGROUND: One in four cases of childhood cancer is incurable. In these cases death can usually be anticipated and therefore preceded by a phase of palliative care. For parents, preparing to let their child die is an extraordinarily painful process.…
BACKGROUND: This study is a pilot experience aiming to investigate the compliance of an institutional cohort of Italian children treated for a malignant disease and their families in completing the health utilities index2, (HUI2) and the…
BACKGROUND: The management of children with cancer during the end-of-life (EOL) period is often difficult and requires skilled medical professionals. Patients with tumors of the central nervous system (CNS) with relapse or disease progression might…
Adolescence is a time of great physical change and maturing brain function. This leads to adolescents establishing independence and coming to terms with the implications of their own actions. Not surprisingly, this phase is characterized by…
BACKGROUND: There is a general consensus that involving a specialized palliative care team in the care of children with advanced cancer can help optimize end-of-life communication; however, how this compares to standard oncology care is still…
BACKGROUND: The provision of Section 2302 of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) allowed pediatric patients who are enrolled in Medicaid to receive hospice care concurrently with curative treatment (i.e., concurrent hospice…
BACKGROUND: There is currently no published, validated measures available that comprehensively capture quality of life (QoL) symptoms for children with poor-prognosis malignancies. The pediatric advanced care-quality of life scale (PAC-QoL) has been…
Peru, an upper-middle income country according to the World Bank, is being severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, counting today 285 213 cases and 9677 deaths, and having one of the highest incidence rates of COVID-19 in the…
BACKGROUND: The use of CAM by the relapsed pediatric oncology population has largely gone unstudied. The main objective of this study was to describe the prevalence of and change in CAM use in oncology patients for whom frontline therapy had failed.…
