What Is Precision Palliative Care? Rethinking a Care Delivery Problem

Dr. Joseph McCollom and Dr. Ramy Sedhom discuss precision palliative care, a new strategy that aims to align palliative care delivery with patient and caregiver needs instead of diagnosis alone. TRANSCRIPT ADN Podcast Episode 8-22 Transcript: What Is Precision Palliative Care? Rethinking a Care Delivery Problem Dr. Joseph McCollom: Hello and welcome to the ASCO Daily News Podcast. I'm your guest host, Dr. Joseph McCollom. I'm a GI medical oncologist and palliative oncologist at the Parkview Packnett Family Cancer Institute here in Fort Wayne, Indiana. So, the early benefits of palliative care for patients with cancer have been well documented, but there are challenges in terms of bandwidth to how do we provide this care, given the workforce shortages in the oncology field. So today, we'll be exploring a new opportunity known as precision palliative care, a strategy that aims to align care delivery with patient and caregiver needs and not just diagnosis alone. Joining me for this discussion is Dr. Ramy Sedhom. He is the medical director of oncology and palliative care at Penn Medicine Princeton Health and a clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Our full disclosures are available in the transcript of this episode. Dr. Sedhom, it's great to have you on the podcast today. Thank you so much for being here. Dr. Ramy Sedhom: Thank you, Joe. It's a pleasure to be here and lucky me to be in conversation with a colleague and friend. Yes, many of us have heard about the benefits of early palliative care. Trials have shown better quality of life, reduced symptoms, and potentially even improved survival. But as we know, the reality is translating that evidence into practice, which is really, really challenging. So Joe, both you and I know that not every patient can see palliative care, or I'd even argue should see palliative care, but that also means there are still many people with real needs who still fall through the cracks. That's why I'm really excited about today's topic, which we'll be discussing, which is precision palliative care. It's a growing shift in mindset from what's this patient's diagnosis or what's this patient's prognosis, to what matters most for this person in front of me right now and what are their individual care needs. I think, Joe, it's very exciting because the field is moving from a blanket approach to one tailored to meet people where they actually are. Dr. Joseph McCollom: Absolutely, Ramy. And I think from the early days when palliative care was kind of being introduced and trying to distinguish itself, I think one of the first models that came to clinicians' eyes was Jennifer Temel's paper in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2010. And her colleagues had really looked at early palliative care integration for patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer. And in that era – this is a pre-immunotherapy era, very early targeted therapy era – the overall prognosis for those patients are similar to the population I serve as a GI medical oncologist, pancreatic cancer today. Typically, median overall survival of a year or less. And so, a lot of her colleagues really wanted her to track overall survival alongside quality of life and depression scores as a result of that. And it really was a landmark publication because not only did it show an improvement of quality of life, but it actually showed an improvement of overall survival. And that was really, I think, revolutionary at the time. You know, a lot of folks had talked about if this was a drug, the FDA would approve it. We all in GI oncology laugh about erlotinib, which got an FDA approval for a 2-week overall survival advantage. And so, it really kind of set the stage for a lot of us in early career who had a passion in the integration of palliative care and oncology. And I think a lot of the subsequent ASCO, NCCN, COC, Commission on Cancer, guidelines followed through with t