The survey of home-based palliative care on the survival rate and place of death of cancer patients in the terminal phase of life

Introduction: Most cancer patients prefer to die at home rather than in a hospital and their families agree with the opinion, when they are informed of the end-of-life problems and poor prognosis of their disease. The place of death for patients with advanced cancer was discussed and these patients preferred home care over hospitalization and most of these patients wanted to experience death at homeMaterials and Methods: This retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted on ۲۴۹ patients with cancer in the advanced terminal phase who were visited at least once at home and received palliative support services from March ۲۰۱۸ to September ۲۰۱۸ the data was gathered from the patients’ files by a checklist and analyzed by EXCEL software. Results: Our analysis shows that out of ۲۴۰ patients with at least one home visit, ۲۱۲ died, of which ۸۱ (۳۸.۲%) were in the hospital and ۱۳۰ (۶۱.۳%) were at home. Also, out of these ۲۴۰ people, ۱۸۷ people (۷۷.۹%) survived from ۱ to ۶ months from the time of filing, ۲۲ people (۹.۲%) between ۶ to ۱۲ months, and ۲۸ people (۱۱.۷%) survived more than ۱۲ months. Conclusions: We conclude that patients were referred to the hospital mainly for receiving services such as palliative medicine and specialized counseling or for exacerbation of physical symptoms that could not be remedied at home. In total, more people died at home, indicating that patients are more satisfied with spending the last moments of their lives at home. ۶-month survival was high, but over a year this survival rate decreased. The survival of patients receiving this care, even if hospitalized, is not much different from that of people without a history of hospitalization.

کلیدواژه ها:

Palliative care ، survival rate ، place of death ، visits at home