Hospitalisations at the end of life: using a sentinel surveillance network to study hospital use and associated patient, disease and healthcare factors

Table 1 Hospital use in the last three months of life (N = 319) *

		N (%)
Not hospitalised		127 (39.8)
Hospitalised at least one day		192 (60.2)
	Hospitalised once	155 (80.7)
	Hospitalised twice	36 (18.8)
	Hospitalised three times	1 (0.5)
If hospitalised in the last three months of life (N = 192):
Mean [sd] length of hospital stay in days		26.2 [23.9]
Median [interquartile range] length of hospital stay in days		19 [9 – 35]
Last hospital admission [number (%) of hospital deaths]	in last week before death:	34 (17.7) [33 (97.1)]
	in second to fourth week before death:	67 (34.9) [52 (77.6)]
	in second to third month before death:	91 (47.4) [53 (58.2)]
Death in hospital		[138 (71.9)]

* Within this population, we observed no differences between the reported deaths occurring between April and June of 2004 and the last death before this period regarding number of hospitalisations, length nor timing of hospital stay at the end of life.

ISSN: 1472-6963