A secondary analysis of a population-based study of cancer patients’ use of specialty palliative care (SPC), 2012–2015, was conducted, comparing a young adult (YA) cohort of those who died at age 21–39 years ( n = 112); a cohort of those who died at 40–64 years old ( n = 2957); and an older cohort that died at age 65 or older ( n = 8949). The YA cohort had a higher rate of SPC use (44.6%) compared to the middle (34.3%, p = 0.0244) and older cohorts (21.1%, p < 0.0001). The cohorts did not differ significantly in the timing of SPC, which often occurred in the final days or weeks prior to death.
Rogers et al. (Sun,) studied this question.