2019 Volume 45 Issue 11 Pages 605-609
Assessment of activities of daily living (ADL) is used in the prognosis of terminal cancer patients. The possibility of a relationship between the Barthel index (BI), which is an index of ADLs, and mortality among terminal cancer patients was indicated in the previous study. Using a retrospective analysis of electronic medical records of terminal cancer patients, it was determined which components of the BI had influence on mortality in this study.
This survey was comprised of 126 patients who died of cancer from January 2016 to December 2017. The mortality rate determined on the 30th day post-hospitalization was 77.8％. The relationships between the mortality rate and the BI, and between the mortality rate and individual components of the BI, were analyzed using a multivariate analysis, the Cox proportional hazards model. The median age (min - max) was 77.5 (30 - 96) years, and 65.9％ of the subjects were male. In the group that required total or partial bathing assistance, there was no significant difference in the mortality rate compared to the groups that were able to independently bathe themselves, but significant differences in the mortality rates of other items were recognized among those groups.
These results indicate that involvement in the prognosis of terminal cancer patients might be different among each item of BI.
