• Min Kyung Hyun, Kyung Hae Jung, Young Ho Yun, Young Ae Kim, Woo Jin Lee, Young Rok Do, Keun Seok Lee, Dae Seog Heo, Jong Soo Choi, Sam Yong Kim, Heung Tae Kim, and Seok-Won Kim.
• National Evidence-based Healthcare Collaborating Agency, Seoul, Korea E-mail : lawyun08@gmail.com.
• Asian Pac J Cancer P. 2013 Jan 1;14(12):7309-14.

AimTo investigate factors that affect the place of death (POD) of terminal cancer patients.Materials And MethodsWe recruited 702 consecutive patients (>18 years) from 12 centers during July 2005 to October 2006, and 481 completed the questionnaire. In April 2011, we linked the data for 96.0% (n=462) of the deceased patients to the POD using the 2005-2009 death certificate data of Korea's National Statistical Office. The primary outcome variable was POD, and the predictive value of variables pertaining to patients and caregivers was evaluated using univariate and multivariate analyses.ResultsMost patients died in a hospital (91.5%, n=441) and age, education, preference for place of terminal care, wish to use hospice/palliative care services, terminal cancer awareness, time between diagnosis and death, and global quality-of-life subscale of the EORTC QLQ-C30 of patients, and education and preference for place of terminal care of caregivers were significant predictors in univariate analyses. On multivariate analysis, patients and caregivers who preferred hospital/palliative care as the terminal care option over home care [adjusted odds ratio (aOR), 2.68; 95% confidential interval (CI), 1.18- 7.04 and aOR: 2.65; 95%CI: 1.15-6.09 for patient and caregiver preferences, respectively] and caregivers who were highly educated (aOR, 3.19; 95%CI, 1.44-7.06) were predictors of POD.ConclusionsMost of the terminal cancer patients died in a hospital. Our findings indicate that major predictors of hospital deaths are preference of both the patient and caregiver for hospital/palliative care as the terminal care option and higher education of the caregiver.

26 keywords...

hide…