Primary Study

A Finnish nationwide register cohort of 1,445 colorectal cancer patients finds that specialist palliative care contact more than 30 days before death is associated with fewer ED attendances, fewer hospitalisations and fewer in-hospital deaths than late or no specialist contact.

A prospective study across three Netherlands academic memory clinics finds that disclosing a plasma biomarker panel at multidisciplinary team meetings increased diagnostic confidence in 46% of cases and revised the suspected diagnosis in 5%, using far less invasive testing than CSF or PET.

An Italian registry study of 1,219 people with ALS finds advance care planning discussions rose from roughly half to 62% over the past decade and were positively associated with palliative care activation and home death, but cognitive impairment reduced ACP uptake.

A national Swedish population survey finds preferences for place of end-of-life care and death correlate strongly with how well people understand palliative care, with misunderstanding — such as believing palliative care hastens death — associated with a preference for dying in hospital rather than at home.

A propensity-matched cohort of 1,908 older adults using adult day services in Japan finds those attending services staffed with physiotherapists and occupational therapists had a significantly slower observed decline in activities of daily living over 24 months than those attending unstaffed equivalents.

A South Korean validation study finds an automated interactive-voice-response frailty screening tool performs comparably to the Clinical Frailty Scale, offering a scalable, low-tech case-finding model for community-dwelling older adults.

A nine-centre Italian retrospective study of 160 patients treated with long-acting lipoglycopeptides in a day-hospital setting reports an 86.8% clinical success rate and a low adverse-event rate, with modelled cost savings the authors describe as hypothesis-generating rather than proven.

A randomised controlled trial finds that adding three months of tailored primary-care physiotherapy and occupational therapy rehabilitation to device-aided Parkinson's disease therapy improves motor-skill maintenance and perceived health at 6 and 12 months compared with device-aided therapy alone.

Baseline analysis of a Swedish randomised trial shows a simple, reproducible case-finding rule can identify multimorbid, frequent emergency attenders as a target group for proactive community assessment.

A nationally representative English cohort finds loneliness affects almost a third of adults aged 50 and over with severe breathlessness, with deprivation, living alone and depressive symptoms the strongest predictors.

A multicentre randomised trial finds 12 weeks of self-administered dual-task balance training, with only a sixth of sessions supervised, nearly halved the fall rate compared with self-administered single-task training.

A national retrospective cohort of over 200,000 deceased patients in England finds no significant ethnic disparity in overall primary-care palliative identification, but ethnic minority patients were more likely to enter via specialist referral, with differing survival by ethnic group.

A nationwide Finnish register study finds patients with pancreatic cancer who had specialist palliative care contact more than 30 days before death were hospitalised far less often, and far more likely to receive care at home, in their final month of life.

A secondary analysis of a randomised trial finds a brief GP-delivered intervention for ICU survivors with PTSD symptoms produced a delayed but clinically meaningful quality-of-life improvement at 12 months.

A UK multicentre RCT finds occupational-therapy-delivered job-retention vocational rehabilitation shows no benefit over self-help advice on work limitations at 12 months, and was not cost-effective from an NHS perspective.

A US retrospective cohort of over 1,100 outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy patients finds midline catheters carry more than three times the complication risk of peripherally inserted central catheters.

A Finnish retrospective cohort finds cancer patients enrolled in a structured, paramedic-delivered end-of-life protocol spent more time at home and died at home six times more often than those not enrolled.

A large multicentre cohort finds 17% of adults are in a distinct 'multidomain vulnerability' group a year after returning home following severe traumatic brain injury, predicted by identifiable risk factors.

A UK feasibility cluster trial tests whether a dashboard giving First Contact Physiotherapists individualised feedback on their own referral patterns can reduce unwarranted variation in musculoskeletal care decisions.

A UK validation study finds a brief, 9-to-15-minute cognitive screen performs consistently across left- and right-hemisphere stroke, offering an option where full neuropsychological assessment is not feasible.

A German cluster randomised study finds a 40-hour palliative qualification course for care-home nursing staff increases specialist outpatient contact and improves pain-management follow-through.

A randomised trial finds internet-delivered acceptance and commitment therapy improves health-related quality of life at nine months for people with persistent physical symptoms.

A randomised trial finds a multisegmental, individually tailored exercise programme produces large improvements in balance and postural sway compared with an education-video control.

A Canadian decedent-proxy cohort study finds home deaths most closely match preferred place of death, while palliative care units and hospices deliver better pain control, with regional policy strongly predicting access.