1 40 1 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Citation List Month Backlog URL Address <a href="http://doi.org/10.1089/jpm.2011.0401" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">http://doi.org/10.1089/jpm.2011.0401</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Survival duration among patients with a noncancer diagnosis admitted to a palliative care unit: a retrospective study Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Journal Of Palliative Medicine Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Subject The topic of the resource Female; Humans; Male; retrospective studies; Palliative Care; Terminally Ill; Adult; Prognosis; Medical Audit; Aged; Middle Aged; Length of Stay; Ontario; Survival Analysis; Regression Analysis; 80 and over Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Downar J; Chou Yang-Chieh; Ouellet D; La Delfa Ignazio; Blacker S; Bennett M; Petch C; Cheng SM Description An account of the resource BACKGROUND: Palliative care unit (PCU) beds are a limited resource in Canada, so PCU admission is restricted to patients with a short prognosis. Anecdotally, PCUs further restrict admission of patients with noncancer diagnoses out of fear that they will "oversurvive" and reduce bed availability. This raises concerns that noncancer patients have unequal access to PCU resources. PURPOSE/METHODS: To clarify survival duration of patients with a noncancer diagnosis, we conducted a retrospective review of all admissions to four PCUs in Toronto, Canada, over a 1-year period. We measured associations between demographic data, prognosis, Palliative Performance Score (PPS), length of stay (LOS), and waiting time. RESULTS: We collected data for 1000 patients, of whom 21% had noncancer diagnoses. Noncancer patients were older, with shorter prognoses and lower PPS scores on admission. Noncancer patients had shorter LOS (14 versus 24, p<0.001) than cancer patients and a similar likelihood of being discharged alive to cancer patients. Noncancer patients had a trend to lower LOS across a broad range of demographic, diagnostic, prognostic, and PPS categories. Multivariable analysis showed that LOS was not associated with the diagnosis of cancer (p=0.36). DISCUSSION/CONCLUSION: Noncancer patients have a shorter LOS than cancer patients and a similar likelihood of being discharged alive from a PCU than cancer patients, and the diagnosis of cancer did not correlate with survival in our study population. Our findings demonstrate that noncancer patients are not "oversurviving," and that referring physicians and PCUs should not reject or restrict noncancer referrals out of concern that these patients are having a detrimental impact on PCU bed availability. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context <a href="http://doi.org/10.1089/jpm.2011.0401" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">10.1089/jpm.2011.0401</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource 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). Type The nature or genre of the resource Journal Article 2012 80 And Over Adult Aged Backlog Bennett M Blacker S Cheng SM Chou Yang-Chieh Downar J Female Humans Journal Article Journal of Palliative Medicine La Delfa Ignazio Length Of Stay Male Medical Audit Middle Aged Ontario Ouellet D Palliative Care Petch C Prognosis Regression Analysis Retrospective Studies Survival Analysis Terminally Ill