Characteristics of palliative home care for patients with hematological tumors compared to those of patients with solid tumors

Home care medicine is a platform for providing supportive care for end-stage cancers. However, for undefined reasons, patients with hematological tumors (HTs) often fail to receive opportunities for home care. We, therefore, sought to delineate the clinical differences between solid tumors (STs) and HTs and to determine whether home care is effective for patients with HTs, as well as those with STs. We retrospectively analyzed the treatments, prognosis, and places of death of patients with STs (n=99) and HTs (n=20) who received palliative home care in our clinic and subsequently died between May 2016 and May 2018. Patients with HTs commonly required intravenous antibiotics, platelet transfusion, and red blood cell transfusion, while patients with STs tended to more frequently require the use of opioids. Importantly, there were no significant differences between the cohorts with respect to survival time and frequency of emergent visits to patients after their referral to us. Furthermore, most patients in both groups died at home. More than 50% of patients were not admitted to hospitals during our follow-up. Collectively, while therapeutic approaches sometimes differ, this study provides clinical evidence that palliative home care can be feasible even for patients with HTs.