The Last 30 Days: How Oncologists' Choices Affect End-of-Life Cancer Care

The Last 30 Days: How Oncologists' Choices Affect End-of-Life Cancer Care
Medscape; by Katie Lennon; 8/2/24
Oncologists show significant variability in prescribing systemic cancer therapies in the last 30 days of life. Patients treated by oncologists in the top quartile for end-of-life prescribing behavior were almost four and a half times more likely to receive end-of-life therapy than those treated by these specialists in the bottom quartile... "Given calls to rein in overutilization of end-of-life six to eight cancer therapies, our findings highlight an underappreciated area for further research: How treatment discontinuation before death is shaped by oncologists' unique treatment propensities. Elucidating the reasons for this remarkable variability in oncologist treatment behavior could inform efforts to reduce end-of-life cancer treatment overutilization," wrote the authors of the study. [Free subscription may be required.]