Home Visit Intervention in Pediatric Palliative Care

Indonesia University60 enrolled

Overview

A randomized controlled trial to compare the quality of life between participants who were given palliative care (a 3-month home visit) and those who were not (intervention vs control group) was conducted. Participants consisted of children with cancer aged 2-18 years old. A two-way communication between a trained health worker and participants with or without their parents were conducted as the intervention (report by proxy or self-report). Interventions were given in 6 sessions (1 session every 2 weeks) focusing on problems solving education, symptoms management, self-care, communication, decision making, and long-term care plan assistance. In the first and twelfth week of the intervention, all participants were assessed with the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQLTM) questionnaire cancer module 3.0. Symptomps intensityof anorexia, sleep diturbance, and pain will be asessed in each visit. Participants were followed, Emergency Room (ER) admissions were recorded during follow up period. During the follow up period, ER admissions were recorded further.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

NONE

Enrollment

Conditions

Pediatric Cancer Palliative

Palliative home visitOTHER

a 3-month home visit, providing two-way communication between a trained health worker and patients with or without their parents were conducted as the intervention (report by proxy or self-report). Interventions were given in 6 sessions (1 session every 2 weeks) focusing on problems solving education, symptoms management, self-care, communication, decision making, and long-term care plan assistance.

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 2 YearsMax age: 18 Years

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * Child age 2-18 years old with malignancies who undergo treatments at the Department of Child Health of Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital, during the study period. * All participants who meet the criteria to get palliative care, participants with a total score ≥ 4 based on palliative screening form. * Participants and or parents agree to be enrolled in study Exclusion Criteria: * Patients who live outside Jakarta and therefore unreachable to get palliative intervention

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Quality of life cancer child

Measured using PedsQLTM cancer module 3.0 that consisted of eight dimension. Each dimension consisted of several items to be answered. Item scaling was answered in 5-point Likert scale from 0 (Never) to 4 (Almost always). Scores are transformed to a 0 to 100 scale. Items are reversed scored and linearly transformed to a 0-100 scale as follows: 0=100, 1=75, 2=50, 3=25, 4=0. If more than 50% of the items in the scale are missing, the scale scores should not be computed. Mean score = Sum of the items over the number of items answered. Total score is acquired by summing of all the items over the number of items answered on all the Scales.Higher scores indicate lower problems.

Time frame: at the end of 3 months follow up

Secondary Outcomes

Emergency room visits

Frequency of emergency room visit is recorded during 3-months follow up period. Total number of emergency rom visits will be summed.

Time frame: during 3 months follow up

Symptomps intensity

Measured using Edmonton Symptoms Asessment Scale. The severity at the time of assessment of each symptom is rated from 0 to 10 on a numerical scale, 0 meaning that the symptom is absent and 10 that it is of the worst possible severity. The patient and family should be taught how to complete the scales. Mean score is acquired by summing all scores then divided it by total number of assesment.