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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Age is not the crucial factor in determining how the palliative care needs of people who die from cancer differ from those of people who die from other causes | | Author(s) | Julia M Addington-Hall, Saffron Karlsen |
| Journal title | Journal of Palliative Care, vol 15, no 4, 1999 |
| Pages | pp 13-19 |
| Keywords | Terminal care ; Cancer ; Pain ; Death rate [statistics] ; Age group distribution statistics. |
| Annotation | A belief that the hospice philosophy is particularly applicable to younger people may account in part for the continued focus of palliative care on cancer patients, as it has been argued that age is the crucial factor in determining how cancer and non-cancer patients differ. The authors conducted a secondary analysis of data from a UK population-based retrospective survey, the Regional Study of Care for the Dying, to critically examine this proposition. The sample comprised 2025 cancer and 1471 non-cancer deaths. On average, cancer patients were younger. However, at all ages, cancer and non-cancer patients differed significantly with, for example, different patterns of dependency and symptomatology. Cause of death - rather than age - is therefore the principal difference. The debate within palliative care on whether and how to provide services for non-cancer patients must move beyond a focus on group differences such as age; instead, the focus should be on understanding the varying problems non-cancer patients experience, and how best to organise palliative care services to meet the individual needs of these patients. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-010105005 A |
| Classmark | LV: CK: CT7: S5: S6 * |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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