Late Chemo: Expensive and Unnecessarily Painful
Chemotherapy administered in the last months of life -- which offers a boon to profit-seeking drug companies (one month's supply can cost $10,000 or more) -- significantly increased the odds that a cancer patient would require intensive treatment in the last week of life, late referral to hospice care, and death away from their preferred place, an investigation has shown.
Chemotherapy administered in the last months of life — which offers a boon to profit-seeking drug companies (one month’s supply can cost $10,000 or more) — significantly increased the odds that a cancer patient would require intensive treatment in the last week of life, late referral to hospice care, and death away from their preferred place, an investigation has shown.
MedPage Today reports:
Patients treated with palliative chemotherapy were five to 10 times more likely to receive intensive medical care and to die in an intensive care unit (ICU). Fewer than half died at home as compared with two-thirds of patients with metastatic cancer not treated with palliative chemotherapy.
The findings call into question the benefits of palliative chemotherapy in terminally ill cancer patients, according to an article published online in BMJ.
“Our results suggest that less use of palliative chemotherapy among patients recognized to have a life expectancy of 6 months or less — or more frequent end-of-life discussions in this group — may reduce intensive end-of-life care and promote earlier access to hospice services, thus improving the quality of advanced cancer patients’ end-of-life care,” Holly Prigerson, PhD, of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, and colleagues concluded.
Read more here.
— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
Your support is crucial...As we navigate an uncertain 2025, with a new administration questioning press freedoms, the risks are clear: our ability to report freely is under threat.
Your tax-deductible donation enables us to dig deeper, delivering fearless investigative reporting and analysis that exposes the reality beneath the headlines — without compromise.
Now is the time to take action. Stand with our courageous journalists. Donate today to protect a free press, uphold democracy and uncover the stories that need to be told.
Film
Cinema’s most striking colorist paints a scene from the end of life.
Environment
Though it causes more cancer than any other toxic air pollutant, little is being done to curb the risk posed by the ubiquitous gas.
Ear to the Ground
After promising to remove glyphosate from its popular herbicide, Bayer has instead made its lawn products vastly more toxic.
Health & Wellness
As medical assistance in dying becomes legal in Vermont and Oregon, terminally ill patients find themselves traveling to die on their terms.
Military
While the U.S. military used the herbicide to defoliate the jungles of Southeast Asia, it sprayed the same chemicals to kill poison oak and other weeds in northern California.
Global Voices
When “forever chemicals” contaminated their water, Italian mothers got organized and took the polluters to court.
You need to be a supporter to comment.
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.