Use of Palliative Oxygen in Cancer Patients.
Caroline Gosselin, Mélanie Côté, Lise Tremblay and 1 others
PMID 36452992WHAT IT FOUND
25 of 134 patients received home palliative oxygen without meeting program criteria. 48 had only mild or moderate breathlessness, and 26 were not on opioids.
Nurses should check symptoms and medicines before oxygen is assumed helpful.
Key findings
0125 of 134 patients did not meet eligibility criteria for the home palliative oxygen program but still received it.
02At oxygen initiation, 48 patients had only mild or moderate dyspnea and 26 patients were not receiving opioids.
03Nine patients were prescribed palliative oxygen without being dyspneic or receiving opioids.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
It is a retrospective chart review, not a trial of oxygen. 114 of 248 prescribed patients were excluded because dyspnea and medication data were missing. Dyspnea and medication data were not collected systematically for the study. The reasons patients received oxygen despite not meeting criteria were not recorded. Hours per day of oxygen use were not recorded. The study did not test oxygen against no oxygen, so it cannot show whether oxygen changed breathlessness.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest and received no financial support for the research, authorship, or publication.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as proof that palliative oxygen relieves breathlessness. It is a retrospective chart review of prescriptions and survival, not a trial of oxygen versus no oxygen, and it did not measure breathlessness after oxygen use.