Table 1 Patients characteristics of the overall cohort and the sedated versus non-sedated patients; missing data range <1
From: Sedation at the end of life - a nation-wide study in palliative care units in Austria
Overall cohort (N = 2414) | Sedated patients (n = 502, 21 %) | Non-sedated patients (n = 1912, 79 %) | p-value | Corrected p-value | effect size | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Age in years in median (IQR) | 73 (64–82) | 67 (56–75) | 74 (65–83) | ≤0.001* | ≤0.001* | r = 0.220 | |||
Time between admission and death in days in median (IQR) | 9 (4 – 20) | 10 (5–19) | 9 (4–22) | 0.491 | 0.491 | - | |||
n | % | n | % | n | % | ||||
Sex | 0.014* | 0.070 | φ = 0.051 | ||||||
Female | 1251 | 52 % | 236 | 47 % | 1015 | 53 % | |||
Male | 1158 | 48 % | 266 | 53 % | 892 | 47 % | |||
Oncological disease | 2027 | 84 % | 461 | 92 % | 1566 | 82 % | ≤0.001* | ≤0.001* | φ = 0.107 |
Other diseases | 372 | 15 % | 40 | 8 % | 332 | 17 % | |||
Type of palliative care | ≤0.001* | ≤0.001* | φ = 0.175 | ||||||
Hospital based | 1930 | 80 % | 470 | 94 % | 1460 | 76 % | |||
Mobile | 484 | 20 % | 32 | 6 % | 452 | 24 % | |||
Co-medication in the last three days of life | |||||||||
Opioids pain medication | 2213 | 92 % | 484 | 96 % | 1729 | 90 % | ≤0.001* | ≤0.001* | φ = 0.100 |
Non-opioid pain medication | 1271 | 53 % | 240 | 48 % | 1031 | 54 % | 0.032* | 0.128 | φ = 0.044 |
I.v. hydration | 1018 | 42 % | 242 | 48 % | 776 | 41 % | 0.001* | 0.006* | φ = 0.077 |
Artificial nutrition | 624 | 26 % | 114 | 23 % | 510 | 27 % | ≤0.001* | ≤0.001* | φ = 0.099 |
Antibiotic treatment | 404 | 17 % | 96 | 19 % | 308 | 16 % | 0.088 | 0.176 | |
DVTP medication | 571 | 24 % | 133 | 27 % | 438 | 23 % | 0.071 | 0.213 | |