3.1 Data

This investigation was planned based on one-year patient data (n=189) that we followed in the palliative care clinic of our hospital (2017-2018). All data was retrospectively used for this study. The scientific study committee of our hospital reviewed and approved the database for using this study. At the beginning of their hospitalization, all patients are informed that their data could be tracked and their written consent is received. In our palliative care unit of the chest diseases referral center, the patients with advanced COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) and interstitial lung diseases are excluded from the study; only cancer cases are included. Most of them were patients with lung cancer who had stopped their advanced oncologic treatment. All patients received supportive treatment regarding their symptom characteristics.

Patient data contain information such as gender, age, symptoms, and signs causing the admission to PCU, the condition of metastasis, biochemical analysis (ALB, CRP, CRP/ALB ratio), hemogram parameters (white, red blood cells, hemoglobin, hematocrit, neutrophil (NE), monocytes, lymphocytes, eosinophil, mean corpuscular volume (MCV), mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC), mean corpuscular hemoglobin (MCH), mean platelet volume (MPV), platelets (PLT), Neutrophil/Lymphocyte ratio). The patient data of prognostic and symptoms measurements are also available. The tools used are PPS and ESAS. PPS score was modified from the Karnofsky Performance Scale’s functional status of ambulation, activity level, evidence of disease, and amounts of self-care oral intake, level of consciousness (8-10). The ESAS is a validated self-reported tool to measure the nine prevalent symptoms of cancer (11). All patient data has been recorded on the first 1-3 days of hospitalization.

Some of the patients died when they were hospitalized. Mortality data of the discharged patients were obtained from the national death notification system after one year (2019). We determined that all of our discharged patients died at the exact time recorded by the national death notification system. All the patients are classified according to their survival time (hospital admission to death) being less or more than thirty days.