Prehospital treatment of oncology patients at the final state of disease Seven cases

Abstract

The care of patients with cancer disease in the final stage amounts to 2.5% of all emergency-medical applications. This corresponded to the number of pediatric emergency cases. For this every emergency physician can be involved in the care of those patients. The care of these patients and their relatives can be very different in comparable illness states. The treatment depends on the experience of the emergency physicians. Emergency physicians should always occur adapted treatment in the will or supposed will of the patient. The use of palliative institutions (e.g. palliative care teams or palliative care units) should be integrated in emergency medicine also. We retrospectively analysed seven emergency cases with patients in the final stage of their cancer disease. The state of the patients' illness and the care giving situation were comparable in all cases. We have considered all data regulations. The cases have shown seven possible care concepts of patients in the final stage of cancer disease. All patients could be categorised as palliative ones. Nevertheless, the emergency physicians were alarmed by the patients' relatives because of needing professional help in an emergency situation. The differences in our study appeared in the primary therapy as well as in the following care of the patient. The seven cases have shown that ideas of palliative medicine could be inevitably in emergency medicine. Those ideas can be very different on account of the professional experiences of the single emergency physician in palliative- and emergency-medical questions. The patients' will and their quality of life is the most important reason for adequate care giving. A supposed statement of the patient's will by their relatives is to be taken into consideration in the therapeutically decision. The cases are an example to show possible decisions in palliative emergency situations.