Palliative Care Use for Critically Ill Patients With Brain Metastases

Abstract

Context: Critically ill patients with brain metastases (BM) face significant uncertainty regarding prognosis and survival and can benefit from Palliative care (PC). However, research regarding the role of PC in this population is lacking.

Objectives: We sought to compare BM patients admitted to an intensive care unit who received an inpatient PC consult (PC cohort) to those who did not (Usual Care, UC cohort).

Methods: We performed a single-institution retrospective cohort analysis. Our outcome variables were mortality, time from intensive care unit admission to death, disposition, and change in code status. We also evaluated PC's role in complex medical decision making, symptom management and hospice education.

Results: PC consult was placed in 31 of 118 (28%) of patients. The overall mortality rates were not statistically different (78.8% vs. 90.3%, P= 0.15, UC vs. PC cohort). Patients in the PC cohort had a shorter time to death, higher rate of death within 30 days of admission, increased rate of discharge to hospice, and increase percentage of code status change to "do not attempt resuscitation" during the admission. The primary services provided by PC were symptom management (n = 21, 67.7%) and assistance in complex medical decision making (n = 20, 64.5%).

Conclusion: In our patient cohort, PC is an underutilized service that can assist in complex medical decision making and symptom management of critically ill BM patients. Further prospective studies surveying patient, family and provider experiences could better inform the qualitative impact of PC in this unique patient population.

Keywords: Brain metastases; critically ill cancer patients; intensive care unit; palliative care; supportive care.