Validation of the palliative prognostic index and palliative prognostic score in a palliative care consultation team setting for patients with advanced cancers in an acute care hospital in Japan.

This study aims to clarify the predictive value of two prognostic prediction tools, the palliative prognostic index (PPI) and the palliative prognostic score (PaPS), in a setting of general hospital palliative care team for patients with advanced cancers in an acute care hospital in Japan. The retrospective observational study includes 247 patients for the PPI analysis and 187 patients for the PaPS analysis, all patients are older than 18 years, hospitalized with an advanced cancer, and referred to the palliative care team in an acute care hospital in Japan. The study successfully show that both the PPI and PaPS have an ability to divide patients into three groups, each with significantly different survival length (p<0.001). However, there are discrepancies in the results for predicting the length of survival between the study and the original studies conducted in hospice settings. The results suggest that although PPI and PaPS successfully divide patients into three groups with significantly different survival times, discrepancies exist in predicting the actual length of survival.