The medical characteristics of end-of-life care in elderly inpatients: a historical cohort study / 中华老年医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore the medical characteristics of end of-life care in elderly inpatients for improving their quality life and distributing appropriately the end-of-life medical expenditure.Methods The historical cohort study was used to survey the characteristics of admission disease,diagnosis and treatment and hospitalization expenditure.The patients were divided into the elderly group (age 60 years and over,228 cases) and control group (age ＜60 years,156 cases).Results There was a statistically significant difference in the admission disease proportion between elderly group and control group (x2 =91.345,P ＜ 0.0001),but the malignant tumor proportion had no differences between the two groups (x2 =9.761,P=0.082); the operation proportion in elderly group (16 cases,7.0％) was lower than in control group (28 cases,17.9％) ; the hospital stay time was longer in elderly group (12.5 days) than in control group (5 days),and the salvage times of elderly group (3 times)was more than that of control group,but the usage of medical device had no differences between the two groups (x2 =0.029,P =0.864).The hospitalization expenditure,medicine expenditure,western medicine expenditure,traditional Chinese medicine expenditure,and medicine proportion were higher in elderly group (15356.0 yuan,6448.3 yuan,5070.0 yuan,895.5 yuan,40.2％,respectively) than in control group.Conclusions Most of the elderly patients with chronic diseases at the end of life have no indication of operation and rely on medicine to maintain life for a long time,and the end-of-life medical expenditure is higher.