Where do patients die when there is no hospice? Real-world data.

Abstract

235 Background: The role of real-world data has been shown to be of vital importance in cancer clinical research in recent years. Furthermore, palliative and end of life care is rarely studied outside the real world setting. Lastly, Greece lacks any significant palliative care or services and the law does not recognize advance directives. Methods: We conducted a retrospective review of real world data derived from the medical files of the deceased patients of our group, in order to assess where patients in Greece die given the lack of hospice facilities. We routinely collect the cause and place of death for all patients as well as the source of the information of the patient's passing prospectively. We then retrospectively collected the date of diagnosis and cancer type. Results: Between 04/01/2019 and 01/30/2022, we collected information regarding the cause and place of death of patients that had been under clinical care in our oncology department. During this time period, 454 patient deaths occurred, of which 54.67% were male and 45.33% female. The median age of death was 63.85 years and the most frequent cause of death was disease progression (76,21%), with only 1,98% of our patients having lost their lives due to toxicity of anticancer treatment. Importantly, the majority of our patients were hospitalized at the time of death in contrast to 23.79% that passed away at home. Data regarding cancer type and overall survival since diagnosis are being processed. Conclusions: Because of the lack of specialized facilities providing end of life care in Greece, most of our patient choose or are forced to spend the last days of their life in general tertiary care hospitals, a situation which might be indicative of both the socio-economic characteristics of our country and the lack of awareness of the necessity of this healthcare infrastructure. Further analysis is pending regarding associated parameters.