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Background: Primary palliative care (PPC) education programs have arisen in response to the recognition that all clinicians need to have a basic set of knowledge and skills to provide excellent care to all patients. PPC education programs appear to vary widely, making it difficult for potential learners to find the right program to fit their needs. We have cataloged and categorized a snapshot of PPC education programs across the United States to serve as a resource for those seeking training, and for educators interested in starting or optimizing such programs., Methods: Medical and commercial search engines (MSEs and CSEs, respectively) were used to generate a list of PPC education programs in the United States. Programs were contacted to supplement information available online, and then categorized based on intended learner, certification/degree conferred upon completion, and other characteristics., Results: There was little overlap between the PPC education programs found through MSEs and CSEs. Programs found via CSEs varied with respect to intended learners, pedagogy, content, and cost. Among the minority of programs that confer a certification/degree upon completion, there is no consensus as to what these signify., Conclusions: The wide variety of PPC education programs is both a challenge to and strength of the field. We hope that this report will serve as a call to develop a standard PPC education taxonomy to help define essential components of all PPC programs, while also leaving sufficient room for programs to serve the unique needs of their local learners and patient populations.

Context:: Many older adults discharged from an inpatient stay require postacute facility placement, which can be a barrier to hospice enrollment since the Medicare hospice benefit does not cover facility costs for patients under routine hospice care., Objectives:: To evaluate the extent to which need for postdischarge facility care was a barrier to hospice enrollment for older patients with short life expectancy discharged from a palliative care unit., Methods:: Retrospective cohort using a prospectively collected database of patients 65 and older with a life expectancy of <6 months admitted to a palliative care unit in an urban, academic medical center and discharged alive from 2012 to 2017. Primary outcome was hospice enrollment at hospital discharge. Exposure of interest was need for facility placement at discharge., Results:: Of 817 included patients, 649 (79%) were discharged with hospice. Patients discharged home had a significantly higher rate of hospice enrollment than patients discharged to a facility-92% versus 71% ( P < .0001). On multivariate logistic regression analysis, discharge to home versus facility remained a strong predictor of hospice enrollment, with an odds ratio for hospice enrollment of 6.04 (95% confidence interval: 3.73-9.79)., Conclusion:: Need for postdischarge facility placement represents a barrier for hospice enrollment among older patients who are otherwise hospice appropriate. The structure of the hospice benefit may require modification so that these hospice appropriate patients can utilize the benefit.

Despite advances in stroke care, patients continue to incur significant disability, are at risk for future events, and are inconsistently comanaged with palliative care (PC) specialty teams. The purpose of this study was to review patients with stroke admitted to our institution, comparing patients with and without PC consultation. We retrospectively reviewed medical record data of all patients with stroke admitted to our neurosciences ICU (NICU) in July 2014 to June 2015 with and without PC consultation. Review focused on stroke type, patient demographics, median days to discharge and death, and posthospitalization discharge. Of 463 patients admitted to the NICU with a stroke diagnosis, 27% (125/463) had (PC) consultation. A higher percentage of the patients with PC consult presented with hemorrhagic stroke than those without PC consult (38% vs 21%, P < .001). Patients with PC consult had longer median days to discharge and death ( P < .001) and a higher percentage of mortality (32% vs 11%). Of the 301 patients without PC consult who discharged (89.1%), 36.5% discharged to inpatient rehab while 10% discharged to a skilled nursing facility. In comparison, of the patients with PC consultation who discharged alive (41.1%), 15.7% discharged to inpatient rehab whereas 39% discharged to skilled nursing ( P < .001). The uncertainty of which patients with stroke benefit most from specialty PC is highlighted in that although sicker patients are referred to PC, a substantial portion (41%) of these patients discharge alive, of which 39.2% discharged to skilled nursing. Future research should focus on which patients with stroke would benefit from specialty PC.

Background: Older adults with advanced CKD have significant pain, other symptoms, and disability. To help ensure that care is consistent with patients' values, nephrology providers should understand their patients' priorities when they make clinical recommendations., Methods: Patients aged ≥60 years with advanced (stage 4 or 5) non-dialysis-dependent CKD receiving care at a CKD clinic completed a validated health outcome prioritization tool to ascertain their health outcome priorities. For each patient, the nephrology provider completed the same health outcome prioritization tool. Patients also answered questions to self-rate their health and completed an end-of-life scenarios instrument. We examined the associations between priorities and self-reported health status and between priorities and acceptance of common end-of-life scenarios, and also measured concordance between patients' priorities and providers' perceptions of priorities., Results: Among 271 patients (median age 71 years), the top health outcome priority was maintaining independence (49%), followed by staying alive (35%), reducing pain (9%), and reducing other symptoms (6%). Nearly half of patients ranked staying alive as their third or fourth priority. There was no relationship between patients' self-rated health status and top priority, but acceptance of some end-of-life scenarios differed significantly between groups with different top priorities. Providers' perceptions about patients' top health outcome priorities were correct only 35% of the time. Patient-provider concordance for any individual health outcome ranking was similarly poor., Conclusions: Nearly half of older adults with advanced CKD ranked maintaining independence as their top heath outcome priority. Almost as many ranked being alive as their last or second-to-last priority. Nephrology providers demonstrated limited knowledge of their patients' priorities., (Copyright © 2018 by the American Society of Nephrology.)

Background: The Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Palliative (FACIT-Pal) 14 instrument measures the quality of life in palliative care patients but its psychometric properties are not well characterized., Objectives: To establish the reliability and validity of the FACIT-Pal 14 in an outpatient palliative care clinic population., Methods: The FACIT-Pal 14 was administered to 227 patients in an outpatient palliative care clinic at a large, urban academic medical center. Internal consistency reliability was assessed with Crohnbach's α, and principal component analysis was used to investigate for multiple underlying latent variables. Construct validity was tested by comparing mean scores in various subgroups., Results: The FACIT-Pal 14 has Crohnbach's α of 0.76, which increases to 0.79 if 2 items are removed. Principal component analysis supports a single latent variable underlying the instrument. Significantly lower mean scores were found in patients with Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) functional status 3 to 4 compared with patients with ECOG functional status 1-2 ( P = .007), in patients with life expectancy under 6 months compared to those with 6 months or greater ( P = .003), and in patients referred to clinic for pain and symptom management compared with patients referred for other reasons ( P = .038). Instrument scores did not significantly differ between men and women or between white and nonwhite patients ( P = .525 and P = .263, respectively)., Conclusions: In an outpatient palliative care clinic population, the FACIT-Pal 14 has good internal consistency, but removal of 2 items would improve consistency. One latent variable underlies the instrument and there is evidence of construct validity.

Background: Palliative care units (PCUs) staffed by specialty-trained physicians and nurses have been established in a number of medical centers. The purpose of this study is to review the 5-year experience of a PCU at a large, urban academic referral center., Methods: We retrospectively reviewed a prospectively collected database of all admissions to the PCU at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the first 5 years of its existence, from 2012 through 2017., Results: Over these 5 years, there were 3321 admissions to the PCU. No single underlying disease process accounted for the majority of the patients, but the largest single category of patients were those with malignancy, who accounted for 38% of admissions. Transfers from the intensive care unit accounted for 50% of admissions, with 43% of admissions from a hospital floor and 7% coming from the emergency department or a clinic. Median length of stay in the PCU was 3 days. In hospital deaths occurred for 50% of admitted patients, while 38% of patients were discharged from the PCU to hospice., Conclusion: These data show that a successful PCU is enabled by buy in from a wide variety of referring specialists and by a multidisciplinary palliative care team focused on care of the actively dying patient as well as pain and symptom management, advance care planning, and hospice referral since a large proportion of referred patients do not die in house.

Sellar and suprasellar paragangliomas are rare. We report the case of a 19-year-old man with sellar paraganglioma with parasellar and posterior pontine extension, requiring multiple transcranial surgeries and radiotherapy. The lesion was avid on Ga DOTANOC PET-CT scan substantiating its neuroendocrine nature.

This paper presents a signal modeling-based new methodology of automatic seizure detection in EEG signals. The proposed method consists of three stages. First, a multirate filterbank structure is proposed that is constructed using the basis vectors of discrete cosine transform. The proposed filterbank decomposes EEG signals into its respective brain rhythms: delta, theta, alpha, beta, and gamma. Second, these brain rhythms are statistically modeled with the class of self-similar Gaussian random processes, namely, fractional Brownian motion and fractional Gaussian noises. The statistics of these processes are modeled using a single parameter called the Hurst exponent. In the last stage, the value of Hurst exponent and autoregressive moving average parameters are used as features to design a binary support vector machine classifier to classify pre-ictal, inter-ictal (epileptic with seizure free interval), and ictal (seizure) EEG segments. The performance of the classifier is assessed via extensive analysis on two widely used data set and is observed to provide good accuracy on both the data set. Thus, this paper proposes a novel signal model for EEG data that best captures the attributes of these signals and hence, allows to boost the classification accuracy of seizure and seizure-free epochs.

Background and Objectives: Prognostic uncertainty is one barrier that impedes providers in engaging patients with CKD in shared decision making and advance care planning. The surprise question has been shown to identify patients at increased risk of dying., Design, Setting, Participants, & Measurements: In our prospective observational study, 488 patients ≥60 years of age with CKD stage 4 or 5 were enrolled. Binary surprise question ( i.e. , "Would you be surprised if this patient died in the next 12 months?") responses were recorded, and dialysis planning preferences, presence of advance care planning documentation, and care preceding death were abstracted., Results: The median patient age was 71 (65-77) years old. Providers responded no and yes to the surprise question for 171 (35%) and 317 (65%) patients, respectively. Median follow-up was 1.9 (1.5-2.1) years, during which 18% of patients died (33% of surprise question no, 10% of surprise question yes; P <0.001). In patients with a known RRT preference (58%), 13% of surprise question no participants had a preference for conservative management (versus 2% of yes counterparts; P <0.001). A medical order ( i.e. , physician order for life-sustaining treatment) was documented in 13% of surprise question no patients versus 5% of yes patients ( P =0.004). Among surprise question no decedents, 41% died at home or hospice, 38% used hospice services, and 54% were hospitalized in the month before death. In surprise question yes decedents, 39% died at home or hospice ( P =0.90 versus no), 26% used hospice services ( P =0.50 versus no), and 67% were hospitalized in the month before death ( P =0.40 versus surprise question no)., Conclusions: Nephrologists' prognostic perceptions were associated with modest changes in care, highlighting a critical gap in conservative management discussions, advance care planning, and end of life care among older adults with CKD stages 4 and 5 and high-risk clinical characteristics., Podcast: This article contains a podcast at https://www.asn-online.org/media/podcast/CJASN/2017&#95;09&#95;18&#95;CJASNPodcast&#95;17&#95;11.mp3., (Copyright © 2017 by the American Society of Nephrology.)

Background: There is a paucity of data evaluating utilization of palliative care in trauma intensive care units., Aim: We sought to determine current indications and determinants of palliative care consultation in the trauma intensive care units., Design: Using a cross-sectional assessment, we surveyed trauma surgeons to understand indications, benefits, and barriers trauma surgeons perceive when consulting palliative care., Setting/participants: A total of 1232 surveys were emailed to all members of the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma., Results: A total of 362 providers responded (29% response rate). Majority of respondents were male (n = 287, 80.2%) and practiced in Level 1 (n = 278, 77.7%) trauma centers. Most common indicators for referral to palliative care were expected survival 1 week to 1 month, multisystem organ dysfunction >3 weeks, minimal neurologic responsiveness >1 week, and referral to hospice. In post hoc analysis, there was a significant difference in frequency of utilization of palliative care when respondents had access to board-certified palliative care physicians (χ(2) = 56.4, p < 0.001). Although half of the respondents (n = 199, 55.6%) reported palliative care consults beneficial all or most of the time, nearly still half (n = 174, 48.6%) felt palliative care was underutilized. Most frequent barriers to consultation included resistance from families (n = 144, 40.2%), concerns that physicians were "giving up" (n = 109, 30.4%), and miscommunication of prognosis (n = 98, 27.4%) or diagnosis (n = 58, 16.2%) by the palliative care physician., Conclusion: Although a plurality of trauma surgeons reported palliative care beneficial, those surveyed indicate that palliative care is underutilized. Barriers identified provide important opportunities to further appropriate utilization of palliative care services., (© The Author(s) 2014.)