Resumen

ROCA SOCARRAS, Armando Carlos; REGINALD, Loren; HENRIETTE, Kenneth  y  BLANCO TORRES, Kleydis. Characterization of Terminally Ill Patients, Admitted to the Hospital of Seychelles in Africa. ccm [online]. 2016, vol.20, n.1, pp.4-18. ISSN 1560-4381.

Introduction: palliative care in the hospital setting for terminally ill patients is a need in the middle and low income. Objective: to determine the prevalence of some biological variables in terminally ill patients. Method: a descriptive study in 97 terminally ill patients hospitalized for oncological and non-oncological, diseases in Seychelles between 2010 and 2012 was conducted. The patients' behavior was analyzed in relation to admitting diagnosis, sex, age, comorbidity, functional performance, state of health causing the remission.  Results: during the two studied years cancer was the cause of 59% of the admissions, the dementia of 28% and other causes of terminal state of 13%. The most frequent diagnoses were in the head, neck and colorectal localization on cancer patients, and vascular dementia and stroke among the non cancer patients. The mean age of the patients with dementia was the highest one with 77.03 years (±7.71) and significant differences with the oncological cases (p=0.002) and not oncological (p=0.000). The comorbidity was also highest in the patients with neoplasm (p=0.001) and dementia (p=0.019) in comparison with the rest of the non oncological causes. The stay of the patients with cancer was in 32.87(±48.77) days, dementia 27.03(±38.22) and other causes 26.77(±48.07). There was an increased frequency of referrals from the hospital setting. Conclusions: this study offers information on characteristic of terminal patients in an African country that differ markedly of the rest of the nations of its geographical area.

Palabras clave : neoplasm; dementia; terminally ill; palliative care; hospice care; comorbidity.

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