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Sociodemographic characteristics by primary cancer diagnosis of patients dying in a palliative care unit: A retrospective analysis

Costa-Requena, Gema; Cervelló, Betlem; Cristófol, Ramon; Cañete, José

Published in Gac Med Bilbao. 2011;108:101-7. - vol.108 núm 04

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Español: [ Resumen | The Español version is not available ]

Abstract

Background

To identify the resources that could improve the care of patients with advanced disease, the present study describes the sociodemographic characteristics of advanced cancer patients dying in a palliative care unit.

Method

We performed a retrospective study of oncology patients who died in a palliative care unit from January 2006 to December 2009. A descriptive analysis was conducted to compare the clinical and sociodemographic characteristics of advanced cancer patients, using measures of central tendency and frequencies.

Results

Of the total number of oncology patients, 443 died in the palliative care unit. The most frequent primary cancer site was the lung (20.5%), followed by the liver–pancreas (17.2%), and genitourinary apparatus (16.5%). The primary cancer diagnosis was significantly related to gender (χ²=55.97, p<0.00). The primary cancer diagnosis in younger patients was respiratory tumor. When gender was considered, men with a cancer diagnosis were significantly younger than women (Z=−2.19, p=0.028). No significant differences in the length of admission were identified on comparing means according to the primary cancer diagnosis (χ²=9.77, p=0.36), gender (Z=−0.3, p=0.76) or age groups (χ²=5.29, p=0.15).

Conclusions

Among patients with advanced cancer who died in the palliative care unit, significant demographic variables were gender and age.

Key words: Primary cancer diagnosis. Age. Gender. Palliative care unit. Retrospective analysis.

Introduction

Introduction The national cancer registries in Spain indicated that the proportions of death by cancer in 2006 were decreasing an average 1% for men and 1.3% for women. However, the death rate caused by malignant tumors was estimated to be 26.6% of total mortality, three out of one thousand men and two out of one thousand women died due to cancer. Advanced cancer was the first cause of death in men and was the second cause of death in women. The three types of cancer mortality in Spain were lung, colorectum and prostate for men, and breast, colorectum and lung carcinoma for women.¹ In the last few years, palliative care services have been rapidly expanded in Spain for cancer, long-term chronic illnesses or geriatric terminally ill patients. In Catalonia (northeast region of Spain), during 2005, nearly 66% of patients dying of cancer and 44% of patients dying of non-cancer illness needed palliative care services.² Moreover around 70% of patients admitted for palliative care died in the palliative care unit.² The implementation of palliative care by multidisciplinary team can prevent and relieve issues that cause suffering families and patients at the end of their life.³ We have some evidence that the specialized palliative care resources may contribute to reduce the cost of the health system to take care of patients with advanced illness.⁴ It is interesting to consider that, the current implementation of palliative care is focused on the needs of the patient and their families to improve the quality of the care...