Place of death correlated to sociodemographic factors. A study of 203 patients dying of cancer in a rural Swedish county in 1990

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to ascertain where patients with malignant disease died and to establish whether such factors as age, sex, marital status, place of residence, diagnosis and interval between diagnosis and death bore any relation to the place of death. All medical records of 203 patients who died in one particular Swedish county in 1990 of cancers of the GI tract, the urogenital organs, the breast, the skin and the thyroid were analysed. Of all 203 patients, 25 (12%) died at home, 49 (24%) in nursing homes and 129 (64%) in hospital. The proportion of home deaths was significantly smaller when the interval from diagnosis to death was less than one month. Death in a nursing home, compared with death in a hospital, was more usual among patients older than 80 years, among those living more than 40 km from the hospital and among those from areas where the local health care centre had a nursing home attached.