Survival of Women With Cancer in Palliative Care: Use of the Palliative Prognostic Score in a Population of Brazilian Women

Abstract

The objective of this study was to estimate the survival time of patients referred to the palliative care unit of the National Cancer Institute of Brazil (INCA), using the Palliative Prognostic (PaP) score, and thereby evaluate this tool in a location and population different from that in which the instrument was originally developed. In this prospective study, the instrument, after translation and adaptation to Brazilian Portuguese, was applied to 250 women consecutively referred to the palliative care unit of INCA, who had been followed up as outpatients between June 2005 and August 2006. The PaP score subdivided a heterogeneous population into three homogeneous risk groups with respect to survival time, and the differences between groups were statistically significant. The median overall survival time, calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method, for the three groups was 142 days (95% confidence interval [CI]: 118–172) for Group A, 39 days (95% CI: 28–52) for Group B, and nine days (95% CI: 1–24) for Group C. The percentage survival at 30 days for the three groups was 91.4%, 57.1%, and 0%, respectively. The longer survival time found in the first group in this study would appear to reflect the referral of patients in better clinical condition for outpatient follow-up in this institute. These data suggest that the PaP score is a consistent and easily applied instrument that allows more accurate prognostication in advanced cancer patients with no possibility of cure, irrespective of the geographical location.