Impact of a Systematic Palliative Care on Quality of Life, in Advanced Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis.
Supportive care · Not specified
About this trial
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a rare and severe disease with a survival median between 2 and 4 years which leads to a profound alteration of the quality of life. In thoracic oncology, the systematic and early intervention of a palliative care team result in an improvement of quality of life for patients. In the princeps study published in 2010, the early intervention of a dedicated palliative care team was compared to standard care in a randomized trial of 150 patients and shows a significant improvement : (i) of quality of life (main objective), (ii) of depression scores and even overall survival (11.6 months vs. 8.9 months, P = 0.02), (iii) a benefit in terms of understanding the diagnosis and therapeutic goals (3), (iv) diminution of adapted hospitalization in end of life (in emergency or not). Considering some analogy points between IPF and advanced lung cancer (prognosis, respiratory symptom, psychological burden), it seemed reasonable to assume that the joint systematic intervention of chest physician and palliative care team may provide a significant benefit in terms of quality of life for patients with severe IPF.