Place of death and palliative care following discharge from paediatric intensive care units

Place of death and palliative care following discharge from paediatric intensive care units

Fraser LK; Miller M; Draper ES; McKinney PA; Parslow RC; Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network

Archives Of Disease In Childhood

2011

Child; Female; Humans; infant; Male; Intensive Care Units; Cohort Studies; adolescent; Preschool; infant; Newborn; Hospitalization/statistics & numerical data; Palliative Care/statistics & numerical data; location of death; Pediatric/statistics & numerical data; child mortality; Great Britain/epidemiology; Home Care Services/statistics & numerical data; Hospice Care/statistics & numerical data; Patient Discharge/statistics & numerical data; Referral and Consultation/statistics & numerical data

OBJECTIVE: To determine where children die following discharge from paediatric intensive care units (PICUs) in Great Britain and to investigate if this varies by discharge to palliative care. DESIGN: National cohort of PICU admissions linked to Office of National Statistics death certificate data. SETTING: 31 PICUs in Great Britain. PARTICIPANTS: A cohort of 35 383 children admitted to PICUs between 1 November 2002 until 25 January 2007. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Place of death by palliative care discharge status. RESULTS: 2346 (6.6%) deaths occurred after discharge during the study period, which is more than 10 times the normal child population mortality of 6.0 per 1000. Discharge to palliative care resulted in fewer deaths in hospital (44.1%) (compared to non-palliative care discharges (77.7%)), a greater proportion of deaths were at home (33.3% compared to non-palliative discharges 16.1%) and in a hospice (22.5% compared to non-palliative discharges 5.8%). CONCLUSIONS: Children referred to palliative care services at discharge from PICU are more likely to die in the community (home or hospice) than children not referred to palliative care.

Article information provided for research and reference use only. PedPalASCNET does not hold any rights over the resource listed here. All rights are retained by the journal listed under publisher and/or the creator(s).

Journal Article

Backlog