Purpose: The proportion of terminally ill cancer patients who were discharged home from a hospice/palliative care unit and subsequently died either at home or in the palliative care unit, whose final place of death was consistent with their intended place of care, remains unclear. This study aimed to clarify the consistency between the preferred and actual place of death. Methods: This study was a supplementary study to a multi-institutional bereavement survey conducted in 2018. Results: Responses were obtained from the bereaved families of 202 patients who died at home and 157 patients who died in a palliative care unit. Among them, 80% of home deaths and 82% of palliative care unit deaths were consistent with the stated end-of-life care preference. Among the 22 cases who preferred to die in a palliative care unit but died at home, the most common reason was the availability of physicians and nurses who could provide end-of-life care at home. Among the 11 cases who preferred to die at home but the patients died in a palliative care unit, the most common reason was insufficient pain management at home. Conclusion: Approximately 80% of patients died by their end-of-life care preference, suggesting that many were able to die in their preferred location.

Introduction: This report describes a case of hyperactive delirium induced by tapenatadol whose symptoms were successfully managed with opioid-switching to oxycodon. Case: A 67-year-old female, who had been treated with chemotherapy for malignant thymoma, had to stop chemotherapy because of her carcinomatous pericarditis. Tapentadol 200 mg per day was administrated for her unbearable chest wall tumor invasion-related somatic pain. After a while, insomnia, visual hallucination, thought disturbance, and attention disturbance were appeared. We diagnosed as hyperactive delirium. Because her somatic pain was favorably controlled by tapentadol, we additionally administered quetiapine 50 mg per day instead of replacing tapentadol. Unfortunately, quetiapine was not effective for the delirium. We therefore switched opioids from tapentadol to oxycodon. The delirium was remitted soon after the switching without relapsing of the pain. Conclusion: Tapentadaol reportedly induce hyperactive delirium via its noradrenaline reuptake inhibitory action. This case suggests that switching tapenatadol to other opioid could be an effective option for opioid induced delirium.

Purpose: Hiccups are a symptom that often appear in lung cancer patients during medical treatment. Although various drugs and non-pharmacologic therapies are used to treat them, they often are not effective. We report 2 cases of successful treatment for refractory hiccups due to chemotherapy for lung cancer using pregabalin. Case report: Both patients had advanced squamous lung cancer. That in case 1 was treated using chemotherapy with carboplatin and paclitaxel, while the case 2 received nedaplatin and irinotecan. Hiccups occurred and became exacerbated during chemotherapy in both, and were considered to be induced by the anticancer drugs. Separate treatments with metoclopramide, chlorpromazine, and gabapentin did not have any effect, whereas immediate improvement was seen after taking pregabalin in both cases. Conclusion: Pregabalin, often used as an adjuvant analgesic, controls excessive neuronal excitement. In the present cases, effective relief of refractory hiccups was seen.