Profile of Patients Opting for Palliative Care in India

Abstract

Introduction: Understanding the profile of end users is a key input for designing a service. Centers that provide full-scale palliative care are few and far between in our country, and there is a need to open more centers to extend the services to a larger percentage of patients.

Methods: Patient data from the inception of the center till January 2016 have been stored in a database. The data were mined, exported to Excel, and analyzed.

Results: The data of 11,258 patients revealed the profile of patients, including their age, gender distribution, marital status, symptomology, and outcome. The present paper describes the profile of patients opting for palliative care in our country.

Conclusions: The profile of patients registered at this center validates certain assumptions while debunking others. It is hoped that this profile gives some guidance to those desirous of setting up palliative care services.

Keywords: Demographics; palliative care; patient profile; survival; symptoms.

Figure 1

Annual registrations of patients at the center

Figure 2

Male-to-female ratio in registration

Figure 3

New admission and repeat admissions at the center

Figure 4

Discharge of patients from the center

Figure 5

Patients discharged as a percentage of total registrations

Figure 6

Age-wise distribution of patients

Figure 7

Distribution of metastases in patients

Figure 8

Problems/symptoms reported by patients