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Query: UMLS:C0018801 (heart failure)
 72,216 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Early palliative care (PC) integration in advanced and end-stage heart failure has shown to improve quality of life and spiritual well-being and to reduce physical symptoms. Barriers to implementation exist: perception that PC is opposite to "life-prolonging" therapies or is involved only in cancer disease and in end of life, prognostic difficulties in advanced heart failure, comorbidities, discrepancy between patient-reported symptom burden and objective measures of disease severity. This is why it is necessary to focus on patient and caregivers "needs" instead of exclusively numerical-objective measures, in order to emphasize clinical but also psychological, assistential and spiritual elements contributing to quality of life. The most appropriate instruments are "patient-reported outcome measures" (PROMs) or, better, "patient-centered outcome measures" (PCOMs), such as the Needs Assessment Tool: Progressive Disease-Heart Failure (NAT: PD-HF), Integrated Palliative Outcome Scale (IPOS), NECPAL and Supportive and Palliative Care Indicators Tool (SPICT). Finally, it is important to recognize triggers to initiate a PC approach (important changes in disease trajectory, difficult or refractory symptoms, frequent defibrillator shocks or transplant/mechanical support prevision, functional capacity decline, severe comorbidities, communication needs also for advanced care planning).
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PMID:[Selection criteria to palliative care implementation in advanced heart failure]. 3220 59

Patients with heart failure have comparable illness burden and palliative care needs to those with cancer. However, few of them are offered timely palliative care. One main barrier is the difficulty in identifying those who require palliative care. Several palliative care needs-assessment/measurement tools were used to help identify these patients and assess/measure their needs, but it is not known which one is the most appropriate for this population. This review aimed to identify the most appropriate palliative care needs-assessment/measurement tools for patients with heart failure. Cochrane Library, MEDLINE Complete, AMED, PsycINFO, CINAHL Complete, EMBASE, EThOS, websites of the identified tools, and references and citations of the included studies were searched from inception to 25 June 2020. Studies were included if they evaluated palliative care needs-assessment/measurement tools for heart failure populations in terms of development, psychometrics, or palliative care patient/needs identification. Twenty-seven papers were included regarding nineteen studies, most of which were quantitative and observational. Six tools were identified and compared according to their content and context of use, development, psychometrics, and clinical applications in identifying patients with palliative care needs. Despite limited evidence, the Needs Assessment Tool: Progressive Disease - Heart Failure (NAT:PD-HF) is the most appropriate palliative care needs-assessment tool for use in heart failure populations. It covers most of the patient needs and has the best psychometric properties and evidence of identification ability and appropriateness. Psychometric testing of the tools in patients with heart failure and evaluating the tools to identify those with palliative care needs require more investigation.
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PMID:Palliative care needs-assessment and measurement tools used in patients with heart failure: a systematic mixed-studies review with narrative synthesis. 3274 15