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Low uptake of palliative care for COPD patients within primary care in the UK
Bloom CI, Slaich B, Morales DR, et al. Eur Respir J 2018;14:51.
An open cohort study of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) using electronic healthcare records in the UK was conducted to measure palliative care support in this group. There were 92 365 eligible patients with COPD, with a mean age of 67.8 years. Out of all the patients, 7198 (7.8%) received palliative care support through primary care. During the study follow-up (from 31 December 2004 to 31 March 2015), 26 135 (28.3%) patients died, of whom 5595 (21.4%) received palliative care support. From these, 31.5% had lung cancer. After adjusting for other characteristics, lung cancer had the strongest association with receiving palliative care support. There were also increased odds of receiving palliative care support in the whole cohort of COPD: age ≥75 years, being female, low body …
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Competing interests None declared.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.