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Antibiotic Treatment in End-of-Life Cancer Patients—A Retrospective Observational Study at a Palliative Care Center in Sweden

Background: The aim of this study was to elucidate whether palliative cancer patients benefit from antibiotic treatment in the last two weeks of life when an infection is suspected. Method: We reviewed medical records from 160 deceased palliative cancer patients that had been included in previous st...

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Autores principales: Helde-Frankling, Maria, Bergqvist, Jenny, Bergman, Peter, Björkhem-Bergman, Linda
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5040986/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27608043
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/cancers8090084
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author Helde-Frankling, Maria
Bergqvist, Jenny
Bergman, Peter
Björkhem-Bergman, Linda
author_facet Helde-Frankling, Maria
Bergqvist, Jenny
Bergman, Peter
Björkhem-Bergman, Linda
author_sort Helde-Frankling, Maria
collection PubMed
description Background: The aim of this study was to elucidate whether palliative cancer patients benefit from antibiotic treatment in the last two weeks of life when an infection is suspected. Method: We reviewed medical records from 160 deceased palliative cancer patients that had been included in previous studies on vitamin D and infections. Patients treated with antibiotics during the last two weeks of life were identified and net effects of treatment (symptom relief) and possible adverse events were extracted from medical records. Results: Seventy-nine patients (49%) had been treated with antibiotics during the last two weeks in life. In 37% (n = 29), the treatment resulted in evident symptom relief and among these 50% had a positive bacterial culture, 43% had a negative culture and in 7% no culture was taken. Among the patients with no or unknown effect of antibiotics, 50% had a positive culture. When the indication for antibiotic treatment was to avoid or treat sepsis, symptom relief was achieved in 50% of the patients (n = 19). Only 4% (n = 3) of the patients experienced adverse events of the treatment (diarrhea, nausea). Conclusions: Treating infections with antibiotics in the last weeks of life may improve the quality of life for palliative cancer patients, especially if sepsis is suspected or confirmed. According to our results, the beneficial effects outweigh the potentially negative outcomes.
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spelling pubmed-50409862016-10-05 Antibiotic Treatment in End-of-Life Cancer Patients—A Retrospective Observational Study at a Palliative Care Center in Sweden Helde-Frankling, Maria Bergqvist, Jenny Bergman, Peter Björkhem-Bergman, Linda Cancers (Basel) Article Background: The aim of this study was to elucidate whether palliative cancer patients benefit from antibiotic treatment in the last two weeks of life when an infection is suspected. Method: We reviewed medical records from 160 deceased palliative cancer patients that had been included in previous studies on vitamin D and infections. Patients treated with antibiotics during the last two weeks of life were identified and net effects of treatment (symptom relief) and possible adverse events were extracted from medical records. Results: Seventy-nine patients (49%) had been treated with antibiotics during the last two weeks in life. In 37% (n = 29), the treatment resulted in evident symptom relief and among these 50% had a positive bacterial culture, 43% had a negative culture and in 7% no culture was taken. Among the patients with no or unknown effect of antibiotics, 50% had a positive culture. When the indication for antibiotic treatment was to avoid or treat sepsis, symptom relief was achieved in 50% of the patients (n = 19). Only 4% (n = 3) of the patients experienced adverse events of the treatment (diarrhea, nausea). Conclusions: Treating infections with antibiotics in the last weeks of life may improve the quality of life for palliative cancer patients, especially if sepsis is suspected or confirmed. According to our results, the beneficial effects outweigh the potentially negative outcomes. MDPI 2016-09-06 /pmc/articles/PMC5040986/ /pubmed/27608043 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/cancers8090084 Text en © 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Helde-Frankling, Maria
Bergqvist, Jenny
Bergman, Peter
Björkhem-Bergman, Linda
Antibiotic Treatment in End-of-Life Cancer Patients—A Retrospective Observational Study at a Palliative Care Center in Sweden
title Antibiotic Treatment in End-of-Life Cancer Patients—A Retrospective Observational Study at a Palliative Care Center in Sweden
title_full Antibiotic Treatment in End-of-Life Cancer Patients—A Retrospective Observational Study at a Palliative Care Center in Sweden
title_fullStr Antibiotic Treatment in End-of-Life Cancer Patients—A Retrospective Observational Study at a Palliative Care Center in Sweden
title_full_unstemmed Antibiotic Treatment in End-of-Life Cancer Patients—A Retrospective Observational Study at a Palliative Care Center in Sweden
title_short Antibiotic Treatment in End-of-Life Cancer Patients—A Retrospective Observational Study at a Palliative Care Center in Sweden
title_sort antibiotic treatment in end-of-life cancer patients—a retrospective observational study at a palliative care center in sweden
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5040986/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27608043
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/cancers8090084
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