Association between strong patient–oncologist agreement regarding goals of care and aggressive care at end-of-life for patients with advanced cancer

Introduction The ability of oncologists to understand patients’ goals of care is recognized as a key component of quality care. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of patient–oncologist agreement regarding goals of care upon aggressive care at end of life (EOL) for patients with advanced cancer. Methods Patients with advanced cancer and their oncologists were interviewed at study enrollment and every 3 months thereafter until patient death or end of the study period (15 months). A 100-point visual analogue scale was used to represent goals of care, with quality of life (scored as 0) and survival (scored as 100) as anchors. Strong goal of care agreement for survival was defined as oncologist and patient dyadic goal of care scores that fell between 70 and 100 (100 = highest goal for survival) and for comfort, dyadic goal of care values that fell between 0 and 30 (0 = high goal for comfort). Results Two hundred and six patients and eleven oncologists provided data. At the last interview prior to death, 23.3% of dyads had strong goal of care agreement for either survival (8.3%) or comfort (15%) and 76.7% had no strong agreement. There was a significant association between aggressive care use and categories of dyadic agreement regarding goals of care ( p = 0.024, Cramer’s V = 0.15). Conclusions A large percentage of oncologists did not understand their patients’ EOL goals of care. While aggressive care aligned with categories of dyadic agreement for goals of care, high rates of aggressive care were reported.