Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2017 Oct-Dec;23(4):451-455.
doi: 10.4103/IJPC.IJPC_72_17.

Profile of Patients Opting for Palliative Care in India

Prince John  1 , Ravindra B Ghooi  1
Affiliations

Profile of Patients Opting for Palliative Care in India

Prince John et al. Indian J Palliat Care. 2017 Oct-Dec.

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.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

There are no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Annual registrations of patients at the center
Figure 2
Figure 2
Male-to-female ratio in registration
Figure 3
Figure 3
New admission and repeat admissions at the center
Figure 4
Figure 4
Discharge of patients from the center
Figure 5
Figure 5
Patients discharged as a percentage of total registrations
Figure 6
Figure 6
Age-wise distribution of patients
Figure 7
Figure 7
Distribution of metastases in patients
Figure 8
Figure 8
Problems/symptoms reported by patients
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. WHO. Definition of Palliative Care. [Last accessed 2017 Aug 07]. Available from: http://www.who.int/cancer/palliative/definition/en/
    1. Gorman RD. Integrating palliative care into primary care. Nurs Clin North Am. 2016;51:367–79. - PubMed
    1. George M. Palliative care. Spreading the word. Nurs Stand. 1995;9:21–2. - PubMed
    1. Rajagopal MR, Venkateswaran C. Palliative care in India: Successes and limitations. J Pain Palliat Care Pharmacother. 2003;17:121–8. - PubMed
    1. Sudhakar A. History of cancer, ancient and modern treatment methods. J Cancer Sci Ther. 2009;1:1–4. - PubMed