Through the RESPECT tool, the doctors in charge of a patient's palliative care can have access to predictions of the patients' lives and determine which is the most appropriate care for this stage of their life and when to perform it.
Having better tools during a patient's palliative care, and providing a better quality of life in his last moments, is one of the objectives of Project Big Life, led by Canadian scientists specialized in health calculation research. Through the project they created RESPECT for Risk Assessment for Support: Predictions for the lives of the elderly in the community tool.
“Knowing how long a person has to live is essential to making informed decisions about what treatments they should receive and where they should receive them,” Dr. Peter Tanuseputro, a scientist at Ottawa Hospital, and developer of RESPECT, said in a statement.
The methods for creating RESPECT included the collection of population data over a six-year period through a Home Care Instrument, an assessment used for care planning in Canadian homes. Data were obtained from more than 491,000 older adults (average age 79.7 years) between 2007 and 2013.
The data included nearly 400 variables, including physical functioning, cognitive decline, sociodemographic factors, illnesses, self-report measures, and symptoms.
A validation study of the tool was published by the Canadian Medical Association Journal, under the title: Open Access Prediction of Death in Home Care Users: Referral and Validation of the Risk Assessment Tool for Support: Predictions for the Life of older people in the community (RESPECT).
The study reported the following results: “The RESPECT mortality risk prediction tool that makes use of readily available information can improve identification of end-of-life and palliative care needs in a diverse population of older adults receiving care. domiciliary”.
As conclusions, the study explained that the model works, by providing key information to inform when palliative care should be started. RESPECT could be easily implemented in a health system as a tool for patient care planning. The tool allows patients to "advocate for their care needs to strike the right balance between life extension and comfort."
Check out the full study: https://www.cmaj.ca/content/193/26/E997#sec-9
