Epidemiology and Death-Related Factors of Oncology Patients in Emergency Department

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