Avoidable and unavoidable visits to the emergency department among advanced cancer patients (AdCa) followed by the supportive care (SCPC) outpatient clinic.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
140 Background: Admissions to ED are considered undesirable for AdCa receiving palliative care. There is limited research about clinical characteristics of AdCa followed by SCPC who visited ED, and if these ED visits can be categorized as avoidable or unavoidable. Methods: Retrospective study of 200 consecutive AdCa evaluated by the SCPC physician who visited ED between January 2010 and December 2011. All patients were instructed to call to our main number if any change in symptoms. Based on pre-defined criteria AdCa were classified as having an avoidable (if the problem could have been managed at the outpatient center or by telephone) or unavoidable visit. Demographics and clinical characteristics were collected and analyzed. Results: 47/200 (23.5%) AdCa had avoidable ED-visits (AvED) and 153/200 (76.5%) had unavoidable ED-visits (NAvED). Main reasons for NAvED: changes in mental statu s(24/153, 16%), infectious processes (32/153, 21%), new onset/worsening of pain and dyspnea (75/153,49%), and severe worsening others symptoms (22/153,14%). Age, gender, marital status, and cancer types, reasons for referral to SCPC, and time to ED-visit after SCPC visit were not significantly different between AvED and NAvED patients. Baseline Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale showed no significant difference in pain, dyspnea, fatigue, drowsiness, nausea, well-being, anxiety, and depression for AvED vs. NAvED; except for sleep ≥1: 141/153 (92%) vs. 37/47 (79%), p=0.01001, respectively. None of the patients phoned the SCPC before to ED visit. 17/153 (11%) of AdCa called their primary oncology before NAvED visit vs. 1/46(2%) call before AvED, p=0.078. Multivariate analysis showed that NAvED was associated with worsening of pain (OR:2.485, p<0.0179), changes in mental status (OR:23.143, p<0.0098), and sleep disturbance(OR:3.611, p<0.0116). 0/47(0%) AvED vs. 93/153 (51%) of NAvED were admitted to the hospital, p<0.0001. Conclusions: More than one in five of ED visits by AdCa are avoidable. Efforts through to improve communication after the scheduled appointments, through clinician initiated phone calls, electronic communication and more frequent visits are needed.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".