Cancer Patients' Visits Appear Preventable.

• Position: EMERGENCY ROOM - Brief article

As many as 53% of cancer patients' Emergency Room visits that do not require admission could be avoided with better symptom management and greater availability of outpatient care tailored to their needs, maintains a study by Laura Panattoni, a staff scientist at the Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research, Seattle, Wash. She and her colleagues followed cancer patients in 13 Washington counties with solid tumors whose treatment included chemotherapy, radiation, or both.

"My hope is that seeing this data will promote innovative thinking and investment in how oncology teams manage patient symptoms. Managing nausea, pain, dehydration, diarrhea, and other symptoms in an outpatient setting has great potential to improve patient experience and decrease the cost of care."

Using a list of symptoms that Federal health authorities identified as preventable, combined with symptoms targeted by patient-reported outcome tools, the researchers found that 53% were related to symptoms that could be managed with timely...