The 118 relatives of patients reported about the achievement of 143 treatment goals with an average of 1.2 goals per patient and a maximum of three goals. In total, 21 patients mentioned ‘cure’ as a treatment goal. Since only the relatives of deceased patients were included, we did not ask if the goal ‘cure’ was achieved so we excluded this treatment goal from the analysis. Relatives overall most often reported the achievement of the treatment goal with 0 (not achieved at all) (n = 47). Relatives reported the goals ‘quality of life’, ‘life prolongation’ and ‘decrease in tumour size’ as achieved in 21, 41 and 37% respectively (Fig. 2). In total, 76 relatives (64%) perceived none of the goals as achieved, 42 relatives (36%) reported that at least one of patients’ goals was achieved, and 29 relatives (25%) reported that all goals were achieved (data not shown).
Fig. 2 Achievement of the patients’ treatment goals according to relatives on a scale from 0 to 10 with 0 meaning ‘not achieved at all’ and 10 meaning ‘totally achieved’. These number are dichotomized into achieved and not achieved with a cut off score of 7. * Relatives (n = 118) had answered on 143 treatment goals together