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Patient
Population Receiving a Specific Therapy
Pro - Receiving
a specific therapy
This type
of patient population may be appropriate when the specific therapy
is likely to be highly neuro-toxic. This might include patient
populations undergoing very aggressive chemotherapy regimes,
or those regimes that combine chemotherapy with whole brain
radiation therapy.
In these
cases, it might be more appropriate to include patients with
a variety of primary tumors to be able to assess patients from
different age groups of different genders, and perhaps patients
with different levels of co-morbidity and receiving different
medications. For example, patients with hematological malignancies
seldom receive high doses of opioids because of the lower frequency
of pain in this population while patients with pancreatic or
prostate cancer are frequently treated with high doses of opioids
and/or adjuvant drugs.
Con - Receiving
a specific therapy
This represents
a focused population of patients and a study such as this will
not necessarily reflect the patient population seen by most
cancer physicians. In addition, patients receiving a specific
treatment or therapy may also have other factors in common,
such as a specific cancer diagnosis or other treatments; or
for example, patients receiving chemotherapy or opioids who
are likely to have concurrent treatment with anti-emetic medication.
Example
- Receiving a specific therapy
An example
of a study of patients receiving a specific therapy is illustrated
by the 1995 study by de Stoutz and colleagues.
| Study
title
| Opioid
rotation for toxicity reduction in terminal cancer patients
(de
Stoutz et al., 1995)
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| Patient
population
| 80
patients who underwent a total of 111 opioid rotations for
opioid induced neurotoxicity (of which delirium is one of
the principal features)
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| Results
| Click
for findings
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