Andrzej Kosinski will direct the Data Coordinating Center for the PAL-LIVER Trial Introducing Palliative Care within the Treatment of End Stage Liver Disease at the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI). Kosinski, PhD, Associate Professor of Biostatistics, will be the PI of the Data Coordinating Center (DCC) for the PAL-LIVER cluster-randomized trial. The PAL-LIVER trial was awarded in 2017 by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to the Albert Einstein Healthcare Network (Philadelphia, PA) with Dr. Victor J. Navarro as the overall PI and Dr. Kosinski as the PI of the DCC subcontract. The subcontract $12,822,878 award will be managed by DCRI for the trial coordination, data monitoring, analyses, and site payments. DCRI's Kelly Mundy, MSCR, CCRP, is the Project Leader and Ketsada Syhakhom, MBA, provided grant submission support. The 5 year project started in March 2018.
The PAL-LIVER trial will evaluate two approaches to delivery of palliative care (PC) within the treatment of End Stage Liver Disease (ESLD) and 1260 patients will be enrolled. Fourteen clinical centers will be randomly assigned to either palliative care delivered by a PC consultant within a reasonable period of time after entry, or palliative care delivered immediately by patient's own hepatologist who has been trained in PC. The trial hypothesizes that patients who receive PC by a hepatologist will have a better quality of life than patients who receive PC from a PC consultant. The clinical centers will encompass various areas of the United States with representation of urban, suburban, and rural patients.
Patients with liver disease and caregivers were engaged to conceive and design this research. They affirmed the importance of this research topic and contributed to the specific aims and hypotheses. Patients/caregivers will remain involved throughout the study as part of the Research Advisory Board.
You can follow more news on this Center at DCRI.