Geiken, R. (Rike) (2019) The effect of early versus delayed anti-tumour therapy on survival and the use of supportive care in palliative cancer patients. thesis, Medicine.
Full text available on request.Abstract
Summary The time until the initiation of tumour-specific therapy and the frequency of supportive interventions in palliative cancer patients have hardly been investigated so far. This retrospective study investigates this question in 592 patients with breast, lung and colorectal cancer, receiving palliative anti-tumour therapy. The time period was defined as lasting from palliative cancer diagnosis to the start of the tumour-specific therapy. Only lung cancer patients, forming the largest subgroup, were divided according to early or delayed start of therapy. Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression analyses were used for survival analyses. The use of supportive palliative interventions was investigated by logistic regression. Of all patients, lung cancer patients (n = 375; 63.3%) had the shortest time span from diagnosis to the start of therapy (median = 23 days). Independent of the histological subtype, lung cancer patients with an early onset of therapy showed a significantly shorter median survival time (6 vs. 11 months), a higher hospitalization rate, and more frequently an ECOG-performance status (PS) of ≥2. An early start of therapy was also associated with a shortened overall survival in lung cancer patients with an ECOG-PS of 0. Lung cancer patients received outpatient palliative care most frequently; colorectal cancer patients received parenteral nutrition most frequently. An early start of therapy is associated with a shorter survival time in this study. The start of therapy may depend on other factors (e.g. molecular subtypes or tumour burden), which were not examined, thus needing further investigation.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Thesis) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Faculty supervisor: and Reyners, prof. dr. A.K.L. and Universitair Medisch Centrum Groningen (UMCG) |
| Supervisor name: | Second supervisor: and Bäsecke, PD Dr. Jörg and St. Josefs-Hospital Cloppenburg, Germany and Location of research: and Department of Haematology and Oncology |
| Faculty: | Medical Sciences |
| Date Deposited: | 25 Jun 2020 10:44 |
| Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2020 10:44 |
| URI: | https://umcg.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/545 |
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