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Socioeconomy as a prognostic factor for location of death in Swedish palliative cancer patients
- Source :
- BMC Palliative Care, Vol 20, Iss 1, Pp 1-7 (2021), BMC Palliative Care
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Uppsala universitet, Centrum för klinisk forskning, Gävleborg, 2021.
-
Abstract
- Background An important aspect of end-of-life care is the place of death. A majority of cancer patients prefer home death to hospital death. At the same time, the actual location of death is often against patient’s last-known wish. The aim of this study was to analyze whether socioeconomic factors influence if Swedish palliative cancer patients die at home or at a hospital. There is no previous study on location of death encompassing several years in Swedish cancer patients. Methods Data was collected from the Swedish Register of Palliative Care for patients diagnosed with brain tumor, lung, colorectal, prostate or breast cancer recorded between 2011 and 2014. The data was linked to the Swedish Cancer Register, the Cause of Death Register and the Longitudinal Integration Database for health-insurance and labor-market studies. A total of 8990 patients were included. Results We found that marital status was the factor that seemed to affect the place of death. Lack of a partner, compared to being married, was associated with a higher likelihood of dying at a hospital. Conclusion Our findings are in line with similar earlier studies encompassing only 1 year and based on patients in other countries. Whether inequalities at least partly explain the differences remains to be investigated. Patients dying of cancer in Sweden, who do not have a life partner, may not have the option of dying at home due to lack of informal support. Perhaps the need of extensive community support services to enable home death have to improve, and further studies are warranted to answer this question.
- Subjects :
- Male
medicine.medical_specialty
Palliative care
lcsh:Special situations and conditions
Location of death
Affect (psychology)
Breast cancer
Neoplasms
medicine
Humans
Socioeconomic status
Socioeconomy
Cause of death
Sweden
Terminal Care
Cancer och onkologi
Life partner
business.industry
lcsh:RC952-1245
Cancer
Cancer patients
General Medicine
Prognosis
medicine.disease
Home Care Services
Register study
Family medicine
Cancer and Oncology
Marital status
business
Research Article
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- BMC Palliative Care, Vol 20, Iss 1, Pp 1-7 (2021), BMC Palliative Care
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....39845c3ea135b40037f551fa76ac7ed5