Is a Combination of Six Clinical Tests Useful as a Measure to Predict Short-Term Prognosis in Terminal Cancer Patients? A Prospective Observational Study in a Japanese Palliative Care Unit.

BACKGROUND

To address the need for short-term prognostic methods using objective measures, we developed a method to predict a 2- or 3-week prognosis using only six clinical tests (known as the WPCBAL score). However, the method has not yet been directly compared with globally accepted prognostic methods.

OBJECTIVES

This study aimed to clarify the usefulness of the WPCBAL score by comparing it with other prediction methods.

SETTING/SUBJECTS: A prospective observational study was conducted with patients admitted to the palliative care unit of a Municipal Hospital in Japan between November 2017 and May 2021.

MEASUREMENTS

The primary endpoint was each prediction method's accuracy-the WPCBAL score, Glasgow Prognostic Score (GPS), Palliative Prognostic Index (PPI), Palliative Prognostic Score (PaP), Delirium-Palliative Prognostic Score (D-PaP), and Prognosis in Palliative Care Study predictor models (PiPS-A, PiPS-B)-in predicting a prognosis at 2 or 3 weeks. The secondary endpoints were sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values, area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, and each prediction method's feasibility rate.

RESULTS

In total, 181 patients were included in this study. For the 3-week prognosis, the PaP had the highest accuracy (0.746), followed by the D-PaP (0.735), WPCBAL (0.696), PPI (0.652), and GPS (0.575). For the 2-week prognosis, the PiPS-B had the highest accuracy (0.702), followed by the WPCBAL (0.696) and PiPS-A (0.641).

CONCLUSIONS

The WPCBAL score's accuracy in predicting a 2- or 3-week prognosis was comparable to that of commonly used prognostic methods, thus suggesting its usefulness as a short-term prognostic method.