Serum creatinine level as a prognostic factor in palliative care patients with gastrointestinal cancer in end of life

Introduction: Prognosis prediction has always been a challenge for physicians dealing with patients with cancer in end of life and gastrointestinal cancers are not an exception. Although previous surveys have shown many biological parameters which could act as a prognostic factor, it is still unclear that which parameters can predict the exact prognosis. Moreover, due to some limitations of terminally ill cancer patients, it is difficult to use every parameter as prognostic factors. Therefore, a common and simple clinical parameter is required to predict the prognosis of patients with gastrointestinal cancer in end of life.Materials and Methods: The medical records of ۴۰ patients who died of gastrointestinal cancer was investigated. All of them referred to the palliative care unit in the palliative care department at the Iranian cancer control center (from ۲۰۱۹ to ۲۰۲۳). After excluding those who had not been tested in the last month of their lives, patients’ clinical parameter was observed carefully.Results: In last month before deaths’ tests of ۲۴ gastrointestinal cancer patients, serum creatinine levels of ۱۰ patients were greater than or equal to ۱.۲ mg/dL which was considered high. The level of serum creatinine of ۱۲ patients were between ۰.۶ and ۱.۲ mg/dL Two patients had a serum creatinine level lower than ۰ ۶ mg/dL.Conclusions: These results indicate that ۴۱ of patients have high levels of Serum creatinine (۱.۲ mg/dL) in the last month of their lives. Thus, this factor might probably be useful as a prognostic parameter along with other factors in gastrointestinal cancer patients near end of life More studies are needed in this field.

کلیدواژه ها:

Cancer ، End of life ، Gastrointestinal cancer ، Palliative care ، Serum creatinine