Abstract 1727P
Background
Lung cancer patients are intended to be managed increasingly in the outpatient setting. However, some of them will experience severe clinical or laboratory findings and require unplanned hospital admissions (UHA). The objective of our study was to examine which factors in lung cancer were associated with an UHA.
Methods
We retrospectively reviewed the electronic charts of lung cancer patients who consecutively visited the emergency department (ED) of a tertiary care cancer center. Symptoms were recorded, and the 3 most severe were selected. The main one defined by the patient was used for statistical analysis. Chi2 test was used for the comparison of qualitative variables.
Results
We identified 1337 symptoms for 843 visits (408 patients): median age (years) median: 63 [54-70]; 75.6% were in progressive disease. Respectively 32.2% and 15.0% of the patients presented 2 and 3 symptoms. The 4 most common symptoms were pain (16.2%), general weakness (12.3%), dyspnea (12.2%), and fever (11.3%). According to patients’ situation, 59.2% of ED visits lead to hospitalization in inpatients units for a stay of 8.2 days in average. In multivariable analysis, different factors were associated with the admission: (1) time of the visit (between 19h-21h: OR 2.39 [1.20-4.76], (between 1h-5h: OR 17.23 [2.12-140-7-4.76]; (2) performance status (stage 2: OR 2.82 [2.01-3.96], (stage ≥3: OR 11.35 [6.17-3.20.88], (3) dyspnea: (OR 1.76 [1.14-2.73]; (4) metastasis (other than thoracic) (OR 0.64 [0.42-0.98]. Recurrent UHA in the month concerned 36.7%, general weakness was the only factor associated with a new UHA (p<0.001).
Conclusions
In lung cancer, the occurrence of acute onset symptoms is severe enough to require hospitalization for 52.8% of patients. These results could help to find strategies to reduce the burden of UHA in lung cancer patients.
Clinical trial identification
Editorial acknowledgement
Legal entity responsible for the study
The authors.
Funding
Has not received any funding.
Disclosure
All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.