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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Variations by age in symptoms and dependency levels experienced by people in the last year of life, as reported by surviving family, friends and officials | | Author(s) | Julia Addington-Hall, Dan Altman, Mark McCarthy |
| Journal title | Age and Ageing, vol 27, no 2, March 1998 |
| Pages | pp 129-136 |
| Keywords | Age groups [elderly] ; Dying ; Death ; Symptoms ; Informal care ; Terminal care ; Cancer ; Cross sectional surveys. |
| Annotation | Data from the Regional Study of Care for the Dying (RSCD), a large retrospective survey of people who had died in 1990, were used to explore relationships between age, symptoms and dependency in the last year of life. In cancer patients, the mean number of symptoms reported to have been experienced in the last year of life decreased with age, while the number of symptoms reported to have lasted longer than 6 months increased. In both cancer and non-cancer patients, the proportion of symptoms reported to have been "very distressing" decreased with age. In non-cancer patients, the mean number of self-care tasks the deceased had needed help with increased substantially with age. In cancer patients, the mean level was higher, and there was no age gradient. The prevalence of dependency on most of the seven self-care tasks in cancer patients was comparable with or higher than that in older and most restricted non-cancer patients. The study provides some indication of the need for community health and social services to be accessible to and appropriate for cancer patients of all ages. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-981208221 A |
| Classmark | BB: CX: CW: CT: P6: LV: CK: 3KB |
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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