Abstract
Background:
Interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) comprise a heterogeneous group of fibrotic, progressive pulmonary diseases characterized by poor end-of-life care and hospital deaths. In 2012, we launched our Multidisciplinary Collaborative (MDC) ILD clinic to deliver integrated palliative approach throughout disease trajectory to improve care. We sought to explore the effects of palliative care and other factors on location of death (LOD) of patients with ILD.
Methods:
The MDC-ILD clinic implemented a palliative care bundle including advance care planning (ACP), opiates use, allied health home care engagement, and use of supplemental oxygen and early caregiver engagement in care. Data from patients with ILD who attended the clinic and died between 2012 and 2019 were used to generate scores representing the components and duration of palliative care (palliative care bundle score) and caregiver involvement (caregiver engagement score). We examined the impact of these scores on patients’ LOD.
Results:
A total of 92 MDC-ILD clinic patients were included, 57 (62%) had home or hospice deaths. Patients who died at home or hospice had higher palliative care bundle scores (10.0 ± 4.0 vs 7.8 ± 3.9, P = .01) and caregiver engagement scores (1.7 ± 0.6 vs 1.3 ± 0.7, P = .01) compared to those who died in hospital. Patients were 1.13 times more likely to die at home or hospice following a 1-point increase in palliative care bundle score (95% CI: 1.01-1.29, P = .04) and 2.38 times more likely following a 1-point increase in caregiver engagement score (95% CI: 1.17-5.15, P = .02).
Conclusions:
Home and hospice deaths are feasible in ILD. Early initiation of palliative care bundle components such as ACP discussions, symptom self-management, caregiver engagement, and close collaboration with allied health home care supports can promote adherence to patient preference for home or hospice deaths.
Keywords
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
