Find in Library

Introduction: Accurate diagnosis and proper treatment of oncology patients presented to emergency department<br />(ED) can dramatically enhance their quality of life and decrease their mortality rate. Therefore, the present<br />study aimed to evaluate these patients from an epidemiologic point of view as well as identifying death-related<br />factors. Methods: In this retrospective cross-sectional study, all the oncology patients presented to ED during<br />one year were evaluated using census sampling. A checklist that consisted of clinical and demographic data as<br />well as patients outcome was filled for each patient. Using SPSS 21, multivariate stepwise logistic regression<br />analysis was done to identify independent death-related factors. Results: 568 patients with the mean age of<br />53.64§18.99 years were studied (56.5% male). The most common locations of tumor were brain (32.7%) and<br />gastrointestinal tract (27.1%). Pain (32.5%) was the most frequent chief complaint on ED arrival. The overall<br />mortality rate of studied patients was 154 (27.1%), 25 (16.2%) of them in ED. Among the evaluated factors,<br />marital status, visiting on a weekday, arrival to ED via ambulance, type of cancer, stage of cancer, presence of<br />metastasis, being under treatment with chemo-radiotherapy, chief complaint on arrival, tumor location, and<br />admission to intensive care unit (ICU) correlated significantly with in-hospital mortality. Conclusion: The most<br />common type of cancer in the studied patients was solid, located in the brain or gastrointestinal tract, in stage III<br />and IV, metastatic, and under chemo-radiotherapy. Independent death-related factors included ICU admission,<br />presentation with loss of consciousness or bleeding, arrival via ambulance, cancer stage &gt; II, neuroendocrine<br />and genitourinary location of cancer, and being under chemo-radiotherapy.