Early Palliative Care Can Help With Coping Skills in Advanced Cancers

Early palliative care helped patients with advanced cancers improve their coping skills, research showed.

Opting for early palliative care after receiving a diagnosis of advanced cancer enhanced patients’ self-management and coping skills and may increase two-year survival outcomes, researchers found.

In a recent study published on JAMA Network Open, 144 patients from South Korea with advanced cancer were included and randomized into two groups. One group included 71 patients who were treated with standard cancer care (control group), according to the study. The other group included 73 patients who received early palliative care (intervention group).

Of note, the researchers found that there were no significant differences of quality of life between the two groups during weeks 12 and 24. However, there was a significantly higher score at 18 weeks when comparing baseline (quality of life before the study) with early palliative care, particularly with appetite loss and constipation. At 24 weeks, there were significant differences in physical functioning and fatigue.

Self-Management Strategies for Better Quality of Life and Survival Outcomes

For the quality-of-life evaluation, self-management competency and coping skills were divided into the core strategy, preparation strategy and implementation strategy, the study stated. The researchers found that self-management and coping skills were “significantly greater in the intervention group than in the control group.”

“Self-management strategy, including coping skills, also significantly improved with the [early palliative care] intervention,” the researchers wrote in the study. “The change in self-management coping ability was evaluated in relation to the patient’s independent treatment decision-making, which is the goal of [early palliative care].”

READ MORE: From Comfort to Cure in Cancer Care: Use Palliative Care From the Start

In turn, the researchers noted that the number of survivors in the intervention group was higher at 200 and 400 days following the enrollment of the study. Still, the researchers established that there was no significant difference in survival among the two groups.

After enrolling in the study, patients had a significant and consistent difference in survival approximately 221 days after the intervention, the researchers reported. When patients were divided based on the number of early palliative interventions (more or less than 10 interventions), the two-year survival probability increased significantly if patients received interventions at least 10 or more times.

“The survival rate increased significantly in the intervention group among those who received 10 or more [early palliative] interventions (telephone coaching sessions and care team meetings and assessments), indicating that adherence with intensive intervention can increase the survival rate,” the researchers wrote.

Having long-term improvement in quality of life is important for patients who have advanced cancer, the researchers emphasized, especially “considering that patients with advanced cancer may have a life expectancy of 24 weeks or more.” So, they noted that and early introduction of palliative care after patients received a diagnosis of advanced cancer may help lead to improved quality of life.

“This study showed that the score changes in various QOL measures, especially existential burden, were substantially better even after 24 weeks in the intervention group compared with the control group,” they wrote.

“Although the present [randomized clinical trial] showed that [early palliative] did not improve quality of life at 24 weeks, compared with the control group, participants in the intervention group reported significant improvement in self-management or coping skills. These results show the multifaceted benefits of early palliative care interventions,” wrote the researchers. “Various methods of providing early palliative care also must be developed and applied to increase adherence with interventions, such as virtually or by telephone.”

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