Retrospective Prognostic Study of Death at Home or Hospice Versus at a Hospital Among Patients With Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Background: Patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer greatly care about where they will die. Most people in Japan preferred their location of death as their homes. But only 8.2% of patients with cancer spend their last days at home with palliative care in Japan. Many patients with cancer are still going to spend their last days at a hospital (81.7%). Objective: We examined the survival times of such patients according to their place of death; that is, whether they died at home, at a hospice, or at a hospital, and investigated patient characteristics. Results: Among the 313 patients recruited, 214 were analyzed in this study: 90, 49, and 75 received hospital-based, home-based, and hospice-based palliative care, respectively. The patients who died at a hospice exhibited significantly longer survival than those who died at hospital (estimated median survival time, 420 days [95% confidence interval [CI]: 325-612 days] versus 252 days [95% CI: 201-316 days]; P < .0001). The characteristics of patients did not differ significantly according to place of death. Conclusions: Patients who died at a hospice or at home exhibited significantly longer survival than those who died at a hospital for advanced non-small cell lung cancer.