NCT04632303

Early Palliative Care for Patients With Advanced Pancreatic Cancer.

Early Palliative Care for Patients With Advanced Pancreatic Cancer (EarlyCarePan).

• Status: Active Not Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 250 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Inna Chen, MD · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is one of the deadliest cancers. Patients with pancreatic cancer experience marked physical suffering, psychological distress and resource-demanding care at the end-of-life. Therefore, an urgent need exists to evaluate the early specialized palliative care model in a comparative study and across multiple care settings to define quality of life and survival benefits in patients with pancreatic cancer.

Detailed description

Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is one of the deadliest cancers. Approximately half of the patients diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer die within 2 months from the diagnosis. Patients eligible for systemic treatment have a median survival of less than one year and often receive limited benefit from chemotherapy, usually with progression of disease after only a few months of treatment. Patients with pancreatic cancer experience marked physical suffering, psychological distress and resource-demanding care at the end-of-life. Complications such as pain, fatigue, malnutrition, cachexia, exocrine insufficiency and diagnosis itself lead to a poor quality of life and are associated with high rates of depression and anxiety. These invalidating symptoms are best alleviated by attachment to specialized palliative care and by starting this support early in the course of the disease and not just in the terminal phase. Early implementation of specialized palliative care is not a standard of care in Denmark. Thus, an urgent need exists to evaluate the early, integrated palliative care model in a comparative study and across multiple care settings to define quality of life and survival benefits for patients with pancreatic cancer in Denmark.

Conditions

• Pancreatic Cancer

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Early Palliative Care	Baseline palliative care visit Palliative care visits/calls at least every 4 weeks throughout life and additionally upon request Referral to exercise training Referral to nutritional specialist

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-06-23
• Primary completion: 2024-11-07
• Completion: 2026-11-01
• First posted: 2020-11-17
• Last updated: 2025-09-12

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Denmark