Symptom burden

Context Symptom management is essential in the end-of-life care of long-term care facility residents. Objectives To study discrepancies and possible associated factors in staff and family carers' symptom assessment scores for residents in the last week of life. Methods A postmortem survey in Belgium, The Netherlands, and Finland: staff and family carers completed the End-of-Life in Dementia-Comfort Assessment in Dying scale, rating 14 symptoms on a one-point to three-point scale. Higher scores reflect better comfort.

In recent years, the clinical context for cancer has changed, and it is now characterized by extended survival rates and more diverse and complex cancer trajectories and symptomatology. The changes in the landscape of cancer care also include a shift towards the home setting or the outpatient setting with an increased amount of care being delivered at home or transferred to the patients themselves and their family caregivers.

Purpose This study aims to characterize the symptom burden and life challenges that chordoma patients and their caregivers experience. Methods In this cross-sectional study, we analyzed data from the Chordoma Foundation online community survey conducted in 2014. Frequency counts and percentages were calculated to determine the prevalence of self-reported symptoms and life challenges in the sample. We used Fisher's exact test to compare self-reported symptoms among subgroups with different disease status, tumor locations, and treatments received.