Investigation of End-of-life Symptoms, Evaluation Method in Patients with Malignant Brain Tumors: A Scoping Review

ABSTRACT

Recently, the importance of terminal care has been emphasized in studies of patients with malignant brain tumors. Healthcare professionals should have knowledge of symptoms caused by brain tumors when treating patients in the terminal phase. This study aimed to investigate the data collection method, evaluation time, and symptoms of patients with brain tumor in the terminal phase through literature search. Seven papers were extracted by a literature search. Data collection methods included collecting information from medical records (4 papers), questionnaire (2 papers), and telephone survey (1 paper). Evaluation times ranged from 46 days to 1 week before death. Symptoms presented by patients with malignant brain tumors in the terminal phase could be classified according to disease-specific symptoms and general symptoms presented by patients with other types of terminal cancer. The most commonly reported disease-specific symptoms were disturbance of consciousness (4 papers), seizures (7 papers), dysphagia (6 papers), and headache (6 papers). The proportion of patients with dysphagia increased as they approached the end of life. These results suggest that the data collection method and evaluation time differ depending on the previous studies and that patients with brain tumors in the terminal phase are likely to present disease-specific symptoms.