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BackgroundQuality of care for patients dying in hospital remains suboptimal. A major problem is the identification of valid sources of information about the views and experiences of dying patients and their relatives.AimThis study aimed to estimate the agreement on quality of end-of-life care from the perspectives of bereaved relatives, physicians and nurses interviewed after the patients’ death.DesignIn this prospective study, we interviewed, after the patient death, the bereaved relatives, the attending physicians and the reference nurses, using the Toolkit After-death Family Interview and the View Of Informal Carers-Evaluation of Services (VOICES). Agreement was assessed using Lin’s concordance correlation coefficient, Cohen’s kappa, overall concordance correlation coefficient and Fleiss’ kappa.Setting/participantsWe enrolled a consecutive series of 40 adult patients who died of cancer between January and December 2016 who had spent at least 48 hours in the medical oncology ward of the Santa Maria Hospital of Reggio Emilia, Italy.ResultsWe interviewed all physicians and nurses, and 26 (65.0%) out of 40 relatives. We found a poor agreement on overall quality of care among the three proxies (+0.21; −0.04 to 0.44), between relatives and nurses (+0.05; −0.39 to +0.47), and between relatives and physicians (+0.25; −0.13 to +0.57). A similar poor agreement was observed for all the other Toolkit and VOICES scales.ConclusionsThe agreement was rather poor, confirming previous results in different settings. Information from professional proxies should not be used for assessing the quality of care or for estimating missing information from bereaved relatives.

To retrospectively evaluate sorafenib activity and safety in patients with metastatic thymic carcinoma (TC) and to correlate outcome with c-KIT and PDGFR-alpha mutational status.Patients with metastatic thymic carcinoma treated with sorafenib after at least one prior line of chemotherapy were included. Objective response rate (ORR) and toxicity were evaluated. Analysis of c-KIT and PDGFR-alpha mutational status was performed retrospectively.From October 2007 to August 2011, 5 patients with metastatic thymic carcinoma were evaluated. A median of 8 cycles of sorafenib (range=3-29) were administered. Two patients (40%) displayed a partial response (PR), two patients presented stable disease (SD), while one patient had progression. The median progression-free (PFS) and overall survival were 28 weeks and 92 weeks, respectively. At mutational analysis, only one patient with PR had c-KIT mutation in exon 17 and was successfully treated with sunitinib for 12 months after progression to sorafenib. No PDGFR-alpha mutations were found.Sorafenib activity seems independent from the c-KIT and PDGFR-alpha mutational status. After progression, sequence treatment with a different tyrosine kinase inhibitor can be considered. These results are promising and need further confirmation on larger, possibly prospective, series of patients.

Hormone therapy plays an important role in the management of breast cancer. In the past, testosterone was the most common line of hormonal therapy for this disease, but its use has been almost completely abandoned in the past 40 years. However, because of earlier reports on favorable therapeutic results, we re-evaluated its use for treatment of hormone-responsive patients who have become refractory to other lines of hormonal therapy.Fifty-three consecutive patients with positive metastatic breast cancer who had become refractory to treatment with other hormones and whose disease was progressing, were treated with testosterone propionate, 250 mg once every two weeks, twice, and then once every four weeks until disease progression, drug toxicity, or death.Regression of disease was seen in 9 patients (17%; 2% complete and 15% partial). Stabilization of disease was seen in 22 patients (41.5%). In the remaining 22 patients (41,5%), the disease progressed. Median overall survival was 12 months from beginning of testosterone treatment. Hirsutism and dysphonia were noted occasionally, but were not distressing enough to mandate cessation of treatment. There was no major toxicity except for two non-fatal pulmonary emboli.Testosterone showed a significant therapeutic activity in previously hormone-treated patients with metastatic breast cancer who were no longer responding to such treatment and whose disease was progressing. These results warrant consideration of testosterone use as treatment for patients with hormone-sensitive metastatic breast cancer.

TPS5624 Background: The role and the duration of neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) in advanced epithelial ovarian cancer (AOC) are still debated. A phase III randomized trial showed that 3 courses of...

LBA5501 Background: Three-weekly (3w) CP is standard first-line chemotherapy for AOC pts. Weekly (w) P combined with 3w C prolonged PFS and OS in a JGOG phase III trial. MITO-7 is an academic randomized phase III study, comparing 3w vs. w CP. Methods: AOC chemonaive pts, stage IC-IV, age≤75, ECOG PS≤2, were randomized to 3wCP (C AUC6 + P 175mg/m², d1q21) for 6 cycles or to wCP (C AUC2 + P 60mg/m²) for 18 administrations. Coprimary endpoints were PFS and quality of life (QoL), measured by FACT-O and FACT/GOG-Ntx. With 80% power in detecting HR of 0.75, 2-sided α=0.05, 383 events were needed for PFS analysis. The arms were compared with a log-rank test and in a Cox model adjusted by stage, PS, residual disease, age and size of institution, following intention-to-treat. QoL was measured at baseline and weekly for 9 wks. Interaction between arm and QoL time was tested in a linear mixed model. Toxicity was coded by NCI-CTCAE v3.0. Results: 822 pts were enrolled by MITO, MANGO, and GINECO. Median age was 60; stage III (66%) and IV (18%) were prevalent. As of March 18, 2013, with median follow-up 20 months, 410 PFS events were recorded. Median PFS was 18.8 months with wCP and 16.5 months with 3wCP (HR 0.88, 95%CI 0.72-1.06, p=0.18). Lack of significant difference was confirmed (HR 0.87, 95%CI 0.71-1.05) in Cox model. For all scores, QoL course was significantly different between arms (p

LBA5501 Background: Three-weekly (3w) CP is standard first-line chemotherapy for AOC pts. Weekly (w) P combined with 3w C prolonged PFS and OS in a JGOG phase III trial. MITO-7 is an academic randomized phase III study, comparing 3w vs. w CP. Methods: AOC chemonaive pts, stage IC-IV, age≤75, ECOG PS≤2, were randomized to 3wCP (C AUC6 + P 175mg/m², d1q21) for 6 cycles or to wCP (C AUC2 + P 60mg/m²) for 18 administrations. Coprimary endpoints were PFS and quality of life (QoL), measured by FACT-O and FACT/GOG-Ntx. With 80% power in detecting HR of 0.75, 2-sided α=0.05, 383 events were needed for PFS analysis. The arms were compared with a log-rank test and in a Cox model adjusted by stage, PS, residual disease, age and size of institution, following intention-to-treat. QoL was measured at baseline and weekly for 9 wks. Interaction between arm and QoL time was tested in a linear mixed model. Toxicity was coded by NCI-CTCAE v3.0. Results: 822 pts were enrolled by MITO, MANGO, and GINECO. Median age was 60; st...