International Journal of COPD (May 2022)

Where Do Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Patients Die? 8-Year Trend, with Special Focus on Sex-Related Differences

  • Fernández-García A,
  • Pérez-Ríos M,
  • Candal-Pedreira C,
  • Represas-Represas C,
  • Fernández-Villar A,
  • Santiago-Pérez MI,
  • Rey-Brandariz J,
  • Naveira-Barbeito G,
  • Malvar-Pintos A,
  • Ruano-Ravina A

Journal volume & issue
Vol. Volume 17
pp. 1081 – 1087

Abstract

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Alberto Fernández-García,1 Mónica Pérez-Ríos,1– 3 Cristina Candal-Pedreira,1,3 Cristina Represas-Represas,4,5 Alberto Fernández-Villar,4,5 María Isolina Santiago-Pérez,1,6 Julia Rey-Brandariz,1 Gael Naveira-Barbeito,6 Alberto Malvar-Pintos,6 Alberto Ruano-Ravina1– 3 1Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; 2Consortium for Biomedical Research in Epidemiology and Public Health (Ciber en Epidemiología y Salud Pública/CIBERESP), Madrid, Spain; 3Health Research Institute of Santiago de Compostela (IDIS), Santiago de Compostela, Spain; 4Respiratory Medicine, Alvaro Cunqueiro University Teaching Hospital, Vigo, Spain; 5Grupo NeumoVigo I+i, Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Galicia Sur (IISGS), Vigo, Spain; 6Epidemiology Unit, Galician Health Authority, Xunta de Galicia, Santiago de Compostela, SpainCorrespondence: Mónica Pérez-Ríos, Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, University of Santiago de Compostela, C/ San Francisco s/n, Santiago de Compostela, 15782, Spain, Tel +34-981-581237, Fax +34-981-572282, Email [email protected]: To plan end-of-life care it is essential to ascertain where patients die. There is very little information on the place of death of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients. Accordingly, this study set out to describe the place of death of all COPD-related deaths in a Spanish region across the period 2009– 2017, taking into account the sex and age of the deceased.Methods: We analyzed COPD deaths, codes J41-44 of the International Classification of Diseases-10th revision, in the Galician Autonomous Region from 2009 to 2017. Using death certificate data furnished by the Galician Mortality Registry, information was extracted on place of death, categorized as “hospital”, “nursing home”, “patient’s home”, “other” or “not shown”.Results: There were 10,274 deaths, with a male:female ratio of 2.52; 39.0% of deaths occurred in hospital and 41.4% at home, with these data varying according to sex and age. Across the study period, no reduction was observed in the number of deaths that occurred in hospital. For all the period analyzed, deaths among women occurred mostly at home, with an increase being seen in the number of deaths in nursing homes over the course of the study. Patients aged under 70 years tended to die more frequently in hospital, and those over this age died more frequently at home or in nursing homes.Conclusion: A very high percentage of COPD patients still die in hospital, a trend that has shown no decline in recent years. Even so, there are important variations by sex and age on the place of death of these patients.Keywords: pulmonary disease, chronic obstructive, death, hospital

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