ArticleJournal of pain and symptom management2025
Early Specialist Palliative Care in Patients with Metastatic Cancer: A Population-Based Cohort Study.
Article in Journal of pain and symptom management, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Has the Early Majority Been Reached? Specialised Inpatient Palliative Care Utilisation in Common Solid Tumours in Germany.Cancers · 2026Article
- Re-Examining Early in Early Palliative Care: Precedent, Reality, and Future Research Priorities.JCO oncology practice · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
contextAlthough early integration of specialist palliative care (PC) is recommended for patients with advanced cancer, how frequently these guidelines are followed is unknown.
objectiveTo examine use of early PC in real-world settings.
methodsRetrospective cohort study of patients with a first diagnosis of metastatic cancer who received care in U.S. hospitals with PC programs that participated in the National Palliative Care Registry in 2018-2019. The primary outcome was the proportion of early specialist PC initiation (within eight weeks of a first metastatic cancer diagnosis) overall and after stratification by cancer type. Patient, hospital and PC program characteristics were compared between patients who received early PC, late PC, and no PC.
resultsOf 171,224 patients, 14.1% received PC during the study period. Only 8.0% of patients received early PC. Proportions of early PC were highest for patients with lung cancer, and lowest for patients with breast cancer (12.0% vs. 4.3%). Patients who received early PC had more comorbidities, diagnoses for symptoms or psychiatric conditions, and complications of cancer, and were more likely to have had a serious hospitalization in the prior 12 months. Hospital and program characteristics were not substantially different between patients who did and did not receive early specialist PC.
conclusionA low proportion of patients with metastatic cancer received early specialist PC, demonstrating a significant gap in guideline-concordant delivery of specialist PC. Patients who received early PC were substantially different from those who did not, suggesting that its use is targeted to patients with specific characteristics.
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