scholarly journals Integrating palliative care in heart failure: A review article

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 1348
Author(s):  
Gülşah Çamcı ◽  
Sıdıka Oğuz

Millions of people have heart failure around world. Despite the advances in the care, heart failure has a poor prognosis. Palliative care offers patients a care which achieves symptom control with good quality of life. Palliative care is usually identified with cancer patients but individuals with heart failure also need palliative care. According to the World Health Organization, palliative care is needed mostly by patients with cardiovascular conditions followed by cancer patients. Patients with heart failure suffer from several symptoms, they have poor quality of life and it is difficult to estimate the course of their disease. Patients with heart failure, however, do not receive enough palliative care. Patients with heart failure should have palliative care integrated to their care to ensure that they receive palliative care services. The present study investigated palliative care models offered to patients with heart failures, and examined their outcomes. Several studies have found that heart failure patients who receive palliative care had better symptom management and quality of life and reduced hospitalizations.

Open Medicine ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 348-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hubert Jocham ◽  
Theo Dassen ◽  
Guy Widdershoven ◽  
Ruud Halfens

AbstractPalliative care aims at improving the patient’s quality of life. The assessment of this quality of life (QoL) is crucial for the evaluation of palliative care outcome. Many patients require hospital admissions for symptom control during their cancer journey and most of them die in hospitals, although they would like to stay at home until the end of their lives. In 1986, the European Organization for Research and Treatment (EORTC) initiated a research programme to develop an integrated, modular approach for evaluating the quality of life of patients participating in international clinical trials. This questionnaire measures cancer patients’ physical, psychological and social functions and was used in a wide range of clinical cancer trials with large numbers of research groups and also in various other non-trial studies. The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties, especially the reliability, validity and applicability of the EORTC QLQ-C30 in a German sample of terminally ill cancer patients receiving palliative care in different settings. The questionnaire was well accepted in the present patient population. Scale reliability was good (pre-treatment 0.80) especially for the functional scale. The results support the reliability and validity of the QLQ-C30 (version 3.0) as a measure of the health-related quality of life in German cancer patients receiving palliative care treatment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. e9-e18
Author(s):  
Rebecca (Schuetz) Bierle ◽  
Karen M. Vuckovic ◽  
Catherine J. Ryan

Background The World Health Organization defines palliative care as an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families through the prevention and relief of suffering by assessment and treatment of physical, psychosocial, and spiritual problems. Any patient with chronic debilitating disease, including heart failure, is a candidate for interdisciplinary palliative care to manage their complex physical and psychosocial needs. Clinical Relevance The philosophy of palliative care has evolved to include a vision of holistic care extended to all individuals with serious illness and their families or caregivers that should be integrated throughout the continuum of care, including the acute phase. The critical care nurse will likely encounter patients with heart failure who are receiving or are eligible to receive palliative care at various time points during their illness. Critical care nurses therefore play a pivotal role in symptom palliation affecting the heart failure patient’s quality of life. Purpose To review the models of palliative care and the role that the critical care nurse plays in symptom palliation and preparation of the patient and their family for transition to other levels and settings of care. Content Covered This review addresses the principles and models of palliative care along with how to integrate these principles into all phases of the heart failure disease continuum. Also included are recommendations for palliation of symptoms specific to heart failure patients as well as a discussion of the role of the critical care nurse and the importance of shared decision-making.


2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 26-29
Author(s):  
Marta Gawlik ◽  
Donata Kurpas

In Poland, the statistics on the number of people diagnosed with cancer reveal an increase in the enormity of the problem. In consequence, these include an increase in the number of people taking care of cancer patients at homes. There are currently no available Polish version questionnaire, which allows the assessment of the quality of life for home caregivers. English-language questionnaire examining the quality of life of cancer patients’ caregivers has been developed by the team supervised by M.A.Weitzner and has been widely used since 1999. It contains 35 questions, which are aimed at assessing the level of functioning on four levels: mental, emotional, spiritual and financial. The validation of this questionnaire fulfils the guidelines of translation and validation for the questionnaires, which are deterrmined in a document about the process of translation and adaptation of the instruments of the World Health Organization. Cultural adaptation was an indispensable element for validation, which has met four criteria: allegiance to the translation of the questionnaire into Polish language, the criterion of functional equivalence, the principle of the facade equivalence and the criterion of accuracy reconstruction. The main goal of therapeutic teams in the palliative care is continuous enhancement of their patients and families life quality, including home environments. Both the Polish validation and the application of the questionnaire assessing the life quality of the cancer patients’ caregivers will make it possible to focus on the issues and needs of that population better. The scale may become a useful research tool for evaluation and prevention of the burnout syndrome experienced among family members providing care for cancer patients. Polish version of the CQOL-C questionnaire has met all the validation criteria and can be applied by the therapeutic teams in the palliative care.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 878-883 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahshid Borumandpour Gholamabbas Valizadeh ◽  
Alizallah Dehghan ◽  
Alireza Poumarjani ◽  
Maryam Ahmadifar

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 418-429
Author(s):  
Joana Pereira Sousa ◽  
Hugo Neves ◽  
Miguel Pais-Vieira

Patients with heart failure have difficulty in self-care management, as daily monitoring and recognition of symptoms do not readily trigger an action to avoid hospital admissions. The purpose of this study was to understand the impact of a nurse-led complex intervention on symptom recognition and fluid restriction. A latent growth model was designed to estimate the longitudinal effect of a nursing-led complex intervention on self-care management and quality-of-life changes in patients with heart failure and assessed by a pilot study performed on sixty-three patients (33 control, 30 intervention). Patients in the control group had a higher risk of hospitalisation (IRR 11.36; p < 0.001) and emergency admission (IRR 4.24; p < 0.001) at three-months follow-up. Analysis of the time scores demonstrated that the intervention group had a clear improvement in self-care behaviours (βSlope. Assignment_group = −0.881; p < 0.001) and in the quality of life (βSlope. Assignment_group = 1.739; p < 0.001). This study supports that a nurse-led programme on symptom recognition and fluid restriction can positively impact self-care behaviours and quality of life in patients with heart failure. This randomised controlled trial was retrospectively registered (NCT04892004).


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