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. 2021 Apr 23:11:668481.
doi: 10.3389/fonc.2021.668481. eCollection 2021.

30-Day Mortality Following Palliative Radiotherapy

Miriam Vázquez  1 , Manuel Altabas  1 , Diana C Moreno  1 , Abraham A Geng  1 , Santiago Pérez-Hoyos  2 , Jordi Giralt  1
Affiliations

30-Day Mortality Following Palliative Radiotherapy

Miriam Vázquez et al. Front Oncol. .

Abstract

Purpose: 30-day mortality (30-DM) is a parameter with widespread use as an indicator of avoidance of harm used in medicine. Our objective is to determine the 30-DM followed by palliative radiation therapy (RT) in our department and to identify potential prognosis factors.

Material/methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study including patients treated with palliative RT in our center during 2018 and 2019. Data related to clinical and treatment characteristics were collected.

Results: We treated 708 patients to whom 992 palliative irradiations were delivered. The most frequent primary tumor sites were lung (31%), breast (14.8%), and gastrointestinal (14.8%). Bone was the predominant location of the treatment (56%), and the use of single doses was the preferred treatment schedule (34.4%). The 30-DM was 17.5%. For those who died in the first month the median survival was 17 days. Factors with a significant impact on 30-DM were: male gender (p < 0.0001); Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) Performance Status (PS) of 2-3 (p = 0.0001); visceral metastases (p = 0.0353); lung, gastrointestinal or urinary tract primary tumors (p = 0.016); and single dose RT (p = <0.0001). In the multivariate analysis, male gender, ECOG PS 2-3, gastrointestinal and lung cancer were found to be independent factors related to 30-DM.

Conclusion: Our 30-DM is similar to previous studies. We have found four clinical factors related to 30-DM of which ECOG was the most strongly associated. This data may help to identify terminally ill patients with poor prognosis in order to avoid unnecessary treatments.

Keywords: 30-day mortality; clinical indicator; end-of-life; palliative radiation; prognosis.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Consort diagram demonstrating exclusions from the study population.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Survival curves including: all patients (A) and the five more prevalent primary tumors (B).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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