PainRelief.com Interview with:
Dr Yousuf El Mokhallalati MD, MPH and PhD candidate
Research Assistant, and PhD candidate
Academic Unit of Palliative Care
Leeds Institute of Health Sciences (LIHS)
University of Leeds
Leeds, UK
PainRelief.com: What is the
background for this study? What are the
main findings?
Response: We examined the factors
associated with good pain relief at before death, using data which was drawn
from responses to the National Bereavement Survey (VOICES) in England between
2011 and 2015, which asked families or close relatives to reflect on the quality
of care provided to a person who had died.
Just 10% of patients who
died of a non-cancerous disease received palliative care at home, compared to
63% of cancer patients.
The
study revealed that people who accessed palliative care at home were 2.7 times
more likely to have experienced good pain relief compared to those who did not
receive palliative care.
The
association between good pain relief and palliative care at home occurred
regardless of the type of disease that patients had, but access to palliative
care was not provided equally.
This research
shows that palliative care is associated with significant benefits to people
with every kind of progressive disease, but this is not reflected in the spread
of people that are being offered palliative care.
The study
also suggests that patients who had planned where they wanted to die are nearly
twice as likely to experience good pain relief compared to those who had not,
showing the value of planning ahead and coordinating the support of healthcare
professionals.
Only a quarter of patients were found to have recorded a preferred place of death. Cancer patients were nearly three times more likely to have a preference recorded compared to non-cancer patients (36.6% of cancer patients versus 13.1% of non-cancer patients).
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