Re: Associations between palliative chemotherapy and adult cancer patients’ end of life care and place of death: prospective cohort study
I am sympathetic to the argument made by Wright and colleagues, but their treatment of survival warrants clarification.
From a cohort of 638 terminally ill cancer patients, Wright, et al. analyzed 386 (61%) patients, who enrolled between 2002 and 2008, and had died as of February 28, 2008.
In this subgroup, 56% were receiving chemotherapy upon entry. Patients who received chemotherapy at enrollment were more likely to die as few of us would wish: in the ICU and not at home. More of these patients received feeding tubes and CPR. This is unfortunate. Wright, et al. then add that the overall survival of those who received chemotherapy was no different from those who did not (hazard ratio 1.11, 95% confidence interval 0.90 to 1.38).
However, analyzing survival solely in the subgroup of patients who died is not intuitive. Can the authors provide survival data by use of chemotherapy for the full cohort?
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Re: Associations between palliative chemotherapy and adult cancer patients’ end of life care and place of death: prospective cohort study
I am sympathetic to the argument made by Wright and colleagues, but their treatment of survival warrants clarification.
From a cohort of 638 terminally ill cancer patients, Wright, et al. analyzed 386 (61%) patients, who enrolled between 2002 and 2008, and had died as of February 28, 2008.
In this subgroup, 56% were receiving chemotherapy upon entry. Patients who received chemotherapy at enrollment were more likely to die as few of us would wish: in the ICU and not at home. More of these patients received feeding tubes and CPR. This is unfortunate. Wright, et al. then add that the overall survival of those who received chemotherapy was no different from those who did not (hazard ratio 1.11, 95% confidence interval 0.90 to 1.38).
However, analyzing survival solely in the subgroup of patients who died is not intuitive. Can the authors provide survival data by use of chemotherapy for the full cohort?
Competing interests: No competing interests