For a study, researchers sought to evaluate the quality of end-of-life care provided to non-small cell lung cancer patients with or without dementia using a Japanese countrywide inpatient database.
From April 2014 to November 2018, a nationwide inpatient database of 366 acute care hospitals was employed in the retrospective observational investigation. The quality indicator was the dependent variable, the dementia status as the independent variable, and the age group and Charlson comorbidity index were covariates. The model produced incidence percentage ratios (IPRs) and CIs.
The research population comprised 16,758 patients, 4,507 (26.9%) of whom had dementia. The incidence proportion of opioid use (61.8% vs. 70.8% ; IPR: 0.87, 95% CI: 0.83-0.91), palliative care consultation (2.7% vs. 3.8% ; IPR: 0.71, 95% CI: 0.58-0.88), mechanical ventilation (4.0% vs. 5.4% ; IPR: 0.74, 95% CI: 0.62-0.87), and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (2.2% vs. 2.8%; IPR: 0.79, 95% CI: 0.63–0.99) was significantly lower in patients with dementia than in those without dementia.
Dementia patients were less likely to receive end-of-life care. The study emphasized the significance of delivering high-quality end-of-life care to cancer patients regardless of cognitive condition.
Reference: jpsmjournal.com/article/S0885-3924(22)00484-5/fulltext
