Primary Outcome Measure:
- Percentage of cancer patients that accept and attend the early palliative care programme [ Time Frame: up to 30 days after the diagnosis of cancer ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
Percentage of eligible cancer patients that accept the proposal of the intervention (the early palliative care programme) and that, by 30 days after the diagnosis, effectively start to be followed by the Palliative Care Unit
Secondary Outcome Measures:
- Percentage of cancer patients that receive the proposal of early palliative by the oncologists-pneumologists [ Time Frame: up to 30 days after the diagnosis of cancer ] [ Designated as safety issue: No ]
Percentage of newly diagnosed eligible cancer patients that receive the proposal of the itegrated early palliative care programme
Eligibility Criteria
- Inclusion Criteria:
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- Patients within 8 weeks of cancer diagnosis confirmed by histology or cytology
- Lung cancer (NSCLC or SCLC) stage IIIb-IV OR mesothelioma stage III-IV OR pancreas cancer stage IV, OR gastric cancer stage IIIb-IV
- Age more than 18 years
- Performance status (ECOG) ≤ 2;
- Ability to read, understand and fill-in the questionnaires
- Written informed consent to the study
- Exclusion Criteria:
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- Any chemotherapy, radiotherapy or ormonotherapy for any tumour in the past 12 months
