End-of-life care in cancer patients: how much drug therapy and how much palliative care? Record linkage study in Northern Italy

OBJECTIVES: Investigating end-of-life use of anticancer drugs and of palliative care services. DESIGN: Population based cohort linked to mortality registry and administrative databases. SETTING: Emilia-Romagna Region (Northern Italy). PARTICIPANTS: 55 625 residents who died of cancer between 2017 and 2020. PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: Multivariate analyses were carried out to assess the relationship between cancer drug therapy and palliative care services, and their association with factors related to tumour severity. RESULTS: In the last month of life, 15.3% of study population received anticancer drugs (from 12.5% to 16.9% across the eight Local Health Authorities—LHA) and 40.2% received palliative care services (from 36.2% to 43.7%). Drug therapy was inversely associated with receiving palliative care services within the last 30 days (OR 0.92, 95% CI 0.87 to 0.97), surgery within the last 6 months (OR 0.59, 95% CI 0.52 to 0.67), aggressive tumours (OR 0.88, 95% CI 0.84 to 0.93) and increasing age (OR 0.95, 95% CI 0.95 to 0.95). Drug therapy was more likely among those with haematologic tumours (OR 2.15, 95% CI 2.00 to 2.30) and in case of hospital admissions within the last 6 months (OR 1.63, 95% CI 1.55 to 1.72). Palliative care was less likely among those with haematologic compared with other tumours (OR 0.52, 95% CI 0.49 to 0.56), in case of surgery (OR 0.44, 95% CI 0.39 to 0.49) or hospital admissions (OR 0.70, 95% CI 0.67 to 0.72) within the last 6 months, if receiving anticancer drugs during the last 30 days (OR 0.90, 95% CI 0.85 to 0.94) and for each year of increasing age (OR 0.99, 95% CI 0.99 to 0.99). Palliative care was more likely in the presence of aggressive tumours (OR 1.12, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.16). CONCLUSION: Use of anticancer drugs and palliative care in the last month of life were inversely associated, showing variability across different LHAs. While administrative data have limits, our findings are in line with conclusions of other studies.