Oncological Treatment Administration at End of Life: A Retrospective Study

Abstract

Background:

This work evaluated the proportion of patients who continue therapy until their last month of life or initiate a new therapy in the last 3 months of life (end of life [EOL]).

Methods:

Data for 486 patients were retrospectively collected.

Results:

In EOL, 205 (42.3%) received systemic therapy. Better performance status (last month overall response [OR]: 0.39; 95% CI: 0.25–0.60; p < 0.001; last 3 months OR: 0.47; 95% CI: 0.34–0.65; p < 0.001) and lack of activation of palliative care (last month OR: 0.26; 95% CI: 0.13–0.54; p < 0.001; last 3 months OR: 0.18; 95% CI: 0.10–0.32; p < 0.001) were associated with higher probability of EOL therapy.

Conclusion:

A non-negligible proportion of patients in real-life settings continue to receive systemic treatment in EOL.

Keywords::

• chemotherapy
• end-of-life
• immunotherapy
• oncological treatment
• quality of life
• target therapy

Supplementary data

To view the supplementary data that accompany this paper please visit the journal website at: www.tandfonline.com/doi/suppl/10.2217/fon-2023-0092

Author contributions

Conceptualization: P Bossi; methodology: M Zamparini; formal analysis and investigation: all; supervision: A Berruti; writing original draft preparation: C Gurizzan and A Esposito; writing review and editing: all.

Financial disclosure

The authors have no financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Competing interests disclosure

P Bossi is on the advisory boards of Merck, Sanofi-Regeneron, Merck Sharp & Dohme, Sun Pharma, Angelini, Molteni, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GSK and Nestlè outside the submitted work. He has received conference honoraria from Merck, Sanofi-Regeneron, Merck Sharp & Dohme, Sun Pharma, Angelini, Molteni, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GSK and Nestlè outside the submitted work. A Berruti has received grants and personal fees from Janssen Cilag and Astellas and personal fees from Bayer outside the submitted work. The authors have no other competing interests or relevant affiliations with any organization or entity with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Writing disclosure

Writing assistance was provided by Aashni Shah, Mattia Zamboni (Polistudium SRL, Milan, Italy) and was supported by internal funds.

Ethical conduct of research

The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Coordinating Center in Brescia, Italy on the 31 March 2020 (Brescia Ethics Committee, Spedali Civili [study No. 4001–EoL Study]). In addition, for investigations involving human subjects, informed consent has been obtained from the participants involved.