symptom burden, survival and palliative care in advanced soft tissue sarcoma症状负担,生存和姑息治疗晚期软组织肉瘤.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Sarcoma Volume 2011, Article ID 325189, 8 pages doi:10.1155/2011/325189 Research Article Symptom Burden, Survival and Palliative Care in Advanced Soft Tissue Sarcoma Nicholas J. Gough,1, 2 Clare Smith,1, 3 Joy R. Ross,1, 3 Julia Riley,1, 3 and Ian Judson2, 4 1 Palliative Care Department, Royal Marsden Hospital, Fulham Road, London SW3 6JJ, UK 2 Division of Medicine, Institute of Cancer Research, 123 Old Brompton Road, London SW7 3RP, UK 3 National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College, London SW7 2AZ, UK 4 Sarcoma Unit, Royal Marsden Hospital, Fulham Road, London SW3 6JJ, UK Correspondence should be addressed to Nicholas J. Gough, goughn79@ Received 29 June 2011; Revised 16 August 2011; Accepted 31 August 2011 Academic Editor: Alessandro Gronchi Copyright © 2011 Nicholas J. Gough et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Introduction. The symptom burden and role of palliative care (PC) in patients with advanced soft tissue sarcoma (STS) are not well defined. Methods. This study retrospectively reviewed both symptoms and PC involvement in patients known to an STS referral centre who died in one calendar year. Results. 81 patients met inclusion criteria of which 27% had locally advanced disease and 73% metastases at initial referral. The median number of symptoms was slowly progressive ranging from 2 (range 0–5) before first-line chemotherapy (n = 50) to 3 (range 1–6) at the time of best supportive care (BSC) decision (n = 48). Pain and dyspnoea were the commonest symptoms. Median overall survival from BSC decision was 3.4 weeks. 88% had PC involvemen