ArticleBMJ open2016
What determines duration of palliative care before death for patients with advanced disease? A retrospective cohort study of community and hospital palliative care provision in a large UK city.
Article in BMJ open, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
43 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Prognostic models for survival predictions in advanced cancer patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC palliative care · 2025Pooled it
- Hospice care access inequalities: a systematic review and narrative synthesis.BMJ supportive & palliative care · 2022Pooled it
- Duration of palliative care before death in international routine practice: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC medicine · 2020Pooled it
- Trial
- Palliative care and psychosocial care in metastatic non-small cell lung cancer: factors affecting utilisation of services and impact on patient survival.Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2019Trial
- Clinical outcomes of the best supportive care-clinic for patients with high grade glioma.Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2026Article
- Prevalence and predictors of do-not-resuscitate orders among advanced cancer patients receiving palliative care at a tertiary cancer center in Jordan: a 10-year retrospective analysis.BMC palliative care · 2026Article
- Older patients' opportunity to die at home: a qualitative study on home care nurses' experiences.BMC nursing · 2026Article
- Article
- A Point Prevalence Study of Need and Provision of Palliative Care in Adult and Medical Surgical Inpatients.Journal of clinical nursing · 2025Observational
- Symptom prevalence in gastrointestinal cancer: a secondary analysis of IPOS data.Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2025Article
- Integrating community services provision for older people living with severe frailty: implications from an England-wide survey.Age and ageing · 2025Article
- Prescription of essential medication during the final hospitalization of patients with heart failure or cancer.BMC palliative care · 2025Article
- Development of a patient assessment to meet the needs of patients suffering from advanced non-oncological diseases - the KOPAL trial.BMC primary care · 2025Article
- Towards proactive palliative care in oncology: developing an explainable EHR-based machine learning model for mortality risk prediction.BMC palliative care · 2024Article
- Addressing inequity in palliative care provision for older people living with multimorbidity. Perspectives of community-dwelling older people on their palliative care needs: A scoping review.Palliative medicine · 2023Article
- Antibiotic stewardship in Indian palliative care: a single-center retrospective study.Antimicrobial stewardship & healthcare epidemiology : ASHE · 2023Article
- Assessing the impact of palliative care admission of end-of-life cancer adults.Palliative care and social practice · 2023Article
- Article
- When does early palliative care influence aggressive care at the end of life?Supportive care in cancer : official journal of the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveFor patients with advanced cancer, several randomised controlled trials have shown that access to palliative care at least 6 months before death can improve symptoms, reduce unplanned hospital admissions, minimise aggressive cancer treatments and enable patients to make choices about their end-of-life care, including exercising the choice to die at home. This study determines in a UK population the duration of palliative care before death and explores influencing factors.
designThis retrospective cohort study analysed referrals to three specialist palliative care services; a hospital-based inpatient palliative care team, and two community-based services (hospices). For each patient referred to any of the above services we identified the date of first referral to that team and calculated the median interval between first referral and death. We also calculated how referral time varied by age, sex, diagnosis and type of palliative care service.
participants4650 patients referred to specialist palliative care services in Leeds UK between April 2012 and March 2014.
resultsMedian age of the sample was 75 years. 3903 (84.0%) patients had a diagnosis of cancer. Age, diagnosis and place of referral were significant predictors of duration of palliative care before death. Age was independently associated (J=2 672 078, z=-392046.14, r=0.01) with duration of palliative care regardless of diagnosis. Patients over 75 years have 29 fewer days of palliative care than patients under 50. Patients with non-cancer diagnoses have 13 fewer days of palliative care than patients with cancer. Additionally, patients referred to hospital palliative care receive 24.5 fewer days palliative care than those referred to community palliative care services.
conclusionsThe current timing of referral to palliative care may limit the benefits to patients in terms of improvements in end-of-life care, particularly for older patients and patients with conditions other than cancer.
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