2020/03/12
Keio University
Project Lecturer Kayo Hirooka of the Graduate School of Health Management and Professor Hiroki Fukahori of the Faculty of Nursing and Medical Care at Keio University, among others, have revealed through a questionnaire survey of home-visit nurses that dementia may lower the end-of-life Quality of Life (hereinafter, QOL) of cancer patients.
It has been reported that 7-30% of cancer patients have dementia. It has been suggested that cancer patients with dementia do not receive adequate palliative care and that their end-of-life QOL is lower than in those without dementia, but this had not been empirically demonstrated.
Therefore, this research group conducted a questionnaire survey of home-visit nurses who had provided palliative care to deceased cancer patients, using the Good Death Inventory (GDI), which is widely used to assess end-of-life QOL, to examine the impact of dementia on the end-of-life QOL of cancer patients. The results showed that cancer patients with dementia tended to have lower end-of-life QOL compared to those without dementia.
This research was conducted in collaboration with the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science (Principal Researcher Miharu Nakanishi, Project Leader Atsushi Nishida).
The results of this research were published in the online edition of "Geriatrics & Gerontology International," the official English journal of the Japan Geriatrics Society, on February 4, 2020.
Please see below for the full press release.