Pediatric Palliative Care During End of Life: A Privilege of a Few in a Tertiary Referral Hospital From Colombia

Abstract

Background: We aim to describe the access to palliative care (PC) in hospitalized children during end-of-life care and compare the circumstances surrounding the deaths of hospitalized children as a basis for implementing a pediatric PC program at our institution. Methods: We performed a retrospective chart review of deceased pediatric patients at a tertiary referral hospital in Colombia. The study group was selected by randomly drawing a sample of 100 observations from the 737 deceased children from 2013 to 2016. A 1:1 propensity score (PS) matching was performed to compare the characteristics and outcomes between PC and non-PC treated patients. Results: We included 87 patients. After PS matching, we found that patients under the care of non-PC physicians were more likely to die in the pediatric intensive care unit (non-PC: 6/10 vs PC: 1/10; P =.02), to be on vasopressor agents and mechanical ventilation (non-PC: 7/10 vs PC: 1/10; P =.02), and to receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation at the end of life (non-PC: 5/10 vs PC: 0/10; P =.03). In contrast, a significantly higher proportion of patients under the care of the pediatric PC team died with comfort measures (non-PC: 2/10 vs 8/10; P =.02) and nonescalation of care in physician orders (non-PC: 5/10 vs PC: 10/10; 0.03). Conclusion: In this study, only 10 of 87 patients were treated by the pediatric PC team at the end of life. The latter finding is concerning and is a call to action to improve access to pediatric PC at our institution.