The impact of nutritional status on the outcomes of cancer patients such as mortality, survey and length of hospitalization in palliative care

Year 2019, Volume: 5 Issue: 2, 375 - 381, 04.03.2019

Deniz Avcı , Ali Çetinkaya

https://doi.org/10.18621/eurj.420153

Abstract

Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the effects of
nutritional status of the cancer patients in the palliative unit on some
important outcomes such as mortality, hospitalization periods and survey.

Methods: The study was carried out through a retrospective
review of 65 cancer patients who were treated at the palliative care center.
The age and gender of the patients, the type of cancer, the place where they
are referred to the palliative unit (from home or from the hospital), from
which unit they came from (oncology, intensive care unit, other services), the
length of stay, how long they lived after discharge, how long each patient
lived after the palliative unit hospitalization day and the NRS-2002 scores
were recorded.

Results: There was a statistically significant difference
between the median hospital duration of the home-based patients and the median
duration of hospital-based patients (11 [2-42] days versus 22 [2-180] days) (p = 0.001). The mean survival time of
the home-based patients was median 87.5 (2-323) days, while this was 9 (2-104)
days in hospital-based patients (p =
0.017). While 29.5% (n = 13/27) of the patients coming from the house died in
the palliative care center, it was 70.5% in the patients taken from the
hospital (p = 0.002). The NRS-2002
scores of the cancer patients who were followed up at the palliative unit were
correlated with the age of the patients (r = 0.365, p = 0.003).

Conclusions:
We concluded that the patients who came to palliative care from home have
better surveys than the ones came from the hospital. 

Keywords

palliative care, mortality, nutrition, NRS-2002

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