Effectiveness of Emergency Department Based Palliative Care for Adults with Advanced Disease: A Systematic Review

Emergency departments (EDs) are seeing more patients with palliative care (PC) needs, but evidence on best practice is scarce.

To examine the effectiveness of ED-based PC interventions on hospital admissions (primary outcome), length of stay (LOS), symptoms, quality of life, use of other health care services, and PC referrals for adults with advanced disease.

We searched five databases until August 2014, checked reference lists/conference abstracts, and contacted experts. Eligible studies were controlled trials, pre-post studies, cohort studies, and case series reporting outcomes of ED-based PC.

Five studies with 4374 participants were included: three case series and two cohort studies. Interventions included a screening tool, traditional ED-PC, and integrated ED-PC. Two studies reported on hospital admissions: in one study there was no statistically significant difference in 90-day readmission rates between patients who initiated integrated PC at the ED (11/50 patients, 22%) compared to those who initiated PC after hospital admission (179/1385, 13%); another study showed a high admission rate (90%) in 14 months following ED-PC, but without comparison. One study showed an LOS reduction (mean 4.32 days in ED-initiated PC group versus 8.29 days in postadmission-initiated group; p < 0.01). There was scarce evidence on other outcomes except for conflicting findings on survival: in one study, ED-PC patients were more likely to experience an interval between ED presentation and death >9 hours (OR 2.75, 95% CI 2.21-3.41); another study showed increased mortality risk in the intervention group; and a case series described a higher in-hospital death rate when PC was ED-initiated (62%), compared to ward (16%) or ICU (50%) (unknown p-value).

There is yet no evidence that ED-based PC affects patient outcomes except for indication from one study of no association with 90-day hospital readmission but a possible reduction in LOS if integrated PC is introduced early at ED rather than after hospital admission. There is an urgent need for trials to confirm these findings alongside other potential benefits and survival effects.