How do you manage patients desiring home hospice but with severe thrombocytopenia and/or anemia due to advanced malignancy?
Do you consider supportive transfusions, and if so, have you been successful with keeping patients on hospice while receiving transfusions?
Do you use growth factors?
Answer from: at Community Practice
As a pediatric hematologist/oncologist and pediatric palliative care physician, I can only speak to our approach with children, which may be quite different than the adult world.
In our community, we are not able to provide blood or platelet transfusions in the home. For children who are profoundly...
Answer from: Medical Oncologist at Community Practice
Hospice is a type of palliative care delivered for patients with terminal prognosis and life expectancy of 6 months or fewer. Generally, hospice companies will not provide supportive transfusions of packed red blood cells or platelets. Similarly, growth factors are not part of the routine formulary ...
Comments
Medical Oncologist at Locum Tenens Well stated. When a patient has a life expectancy ...