Clinical findings of a palliative care consultation team at a comprehensive cancer center.

ABSTRACT Background: Palliative care consultation teams (PCCTs) are being established in cancer centers for the management of patients' physical and psychosocial distress. As clinical findings of these teams have been reported infrequently, we aim to describe the experience of our high-volume inpatient PCCT. Patients and methods: We obtained clinical and demographic data on patients referred to our PCCT from the palliative care departmental database from September 1, 2003, to August 31, 2004. Results: In 1 year, 1067 consultations took place for 922 hospitalized patients. The patients' mean age was 60 (range, 3–98) years. The most common cancers were thoracic/head and neck, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, gynecologic cancers, and lymphoma. Thirty-four percent of the patients were transferred to the inpatient palliative care unit, while the remainder were followed by the PCCT as consultants. The main problems requiring PCCT consultation were pain (56%), delirium (34%), dyspnea (25%), fatigue (14%), and en...