Low palliative care utilization is associated with higher risk of mental health challenges among patients with pancreatic cancer, recent research found.
Patients who recently received pancreatic cancer diagnoses may benefit from receiving palliative care services alongside mental health treatments, according to a recent study published in the MDPI journal Healthcare, which spanned the outcomes of 4,029 adults with this condition across an eight-year period.
Researchers dug into patients’ data to examine palliative care utilization and delivery of mental health services and pharmacotherapies between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2018. Nearly half, or 45.7%, of patients with anxiety and depression who received palliative care consultations also utilized mental health services within 12 months of a pancreatic cancer diagnosis. This was a higher rate of mental health care utilization compared to 28.5% of the patients who did not receive palliative care, the study found.
The findings highlight a greater need to examine interdisciplinary approaches that include integration of palliative care services alongside mental health therapies, according to researchers from The Advanced HEAlth Data (AHEAD) Institute, part of Saint Louis University’s Department of Health and Clinical Outcomes Research.
“Our study emphasizes underutilization of [palliative care (PC)] and [mental health (MH)] treatment for pancreatic cancer patients,” study authors stated in the research. “These findings imply a crucial need for further investigation into palliative care’s role in addressing mental health concerns among pancreatic cancer patients.”
The researchers’ used International Classification of Disease (ICD) codes to determine trends in medical diagnoses, inpatient procedures and billed services.
Roughly 22.8% of pancreatic cancer patients without anxiety received a palliative care consultation, the study found. This was a lower rate than the 33.9% of patients with anxiety who utilized these services.
A similar trend in palliative care utilization was found among pancreatic cancer patients with depression compared to others, with 36.2% receiving these services versus 23.2%, respectively.
Though the research did not find a significant effect on the likelihood of documented mental health treatments following a palliative care consultation, the findings did point to common threads of poorer outcomes when these services were not used in concert.
Some pancreatic cancer patients may have greater unmet palliative care needs than others, the research found.
White seniors who were 68 and older represented a larger proportion of the individuals who received anxiety and depression diagnoses. Roughly 10.82% of patients who had both of these mental health conditions and received palliative care consultations were African American.
“Our study highlights the need for further investigation of palliative care in relation to mental health treatments and services utilization for [patients with] pancreatic cancer,” study authors recently told the ONCOLOGY journal CancerNetwork. “Furthermore, our study findings can serve as a valuable resource for health care providers, enabling them to make informed decisions regarding the implementation of palliative care.”
