Medical care utilization by incurable cancer patients in a Swedish county

Medical care utilization by incurable cancer patients in a Swedish county

Axelsson B; Christensen SB

European Journal Of Surgical Oncology

1997

Female; Humans; Male; Adult; Aged; Middle Aged; Outcome Assessment (Health Care); Residence Characteristics; Hospitals; Hospital/utilization; 80 and over; retrospective studies; Hospitalization/statistics & numerical data; Sweden/epidemiology; Patient Admission/statistics & numerical data; Breast Neoplasms/therapy; County; Gastrointestinal Neoplasms/therapy; Length of Stay/statistics & numerical data; Marriage; Neoplasms/drug therapy/radiotherapy/surgery/therapy; Palliative Care/statistics & numerical data/utilization; Prostatic Neoplasms/therapy; Surgery Department; Terminal Care/statistics & numerical data/utilization; Urologic Neoplasms/therapy

A retrospective study of patients with cancer diagnoses treated at a Swedish county hospital was carried out in order to analyse medical care utilization by incurable cancer patients. All 208 patients customarily treated at the Department of General Surgery in Ostersund Hospital for cancer diagnoses during 1 year were included in the study. The main outcome measures were: number of institutional days; admissions; duration of terminal hospitalization. The Department of General Surgery supplied 7570 of all 12,276 (62%) institutional days needed throughout the disease course. The terminal hospitalization (i.e. the period of continuous institutional care ending with the death of the patient) constituted 39% of all institutional days. The duration of the terminal hospitalization seemed to be unrelated to various diagnoses and demographic variables. Patients with cancer of the breast utilized most institutional days/patient (median 80 institutional days) during the disease course. Married patients and patients living within a 40 km radius of the hospital spent significantly more days at the Department of General Surgery during the last 6 months of life than did the unmarried and those living further afield.

1997

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