Context: Predicting prognosis using noninvasive and objective tools may facilitate end-of-life decisions for terminal cancer patients, their families, and other health care professionals.
Objectives: To investigate if the shock index (SI), along with decreased level of consciousness (DLOC), is a reliable tool for predicting short-term survival time in terminal cancer patients.
Methods: A two-part retrospective cohort study was performed on 670 consecutive adult hospice patients. Part 1 of the study was performed to investigate the reliability of SI and DLOC on admission and to make a simple tool for predicting survival time. Part 2 of the study was to validate the tool's reproducibility and analyze the correlation between SI, DLOC, and survival time.
Results: In Part 1, multivariate Cox proportional hazards analyses for all study patients revealed that SI ≥ 1.0 in patients with DLOC was a significant risk factor of death (hazard ratio 3.08; 95% CI 1.72-5.53; P = 0.000). Generalized additive models confirmed that DLOC patients with SI = 1.0 had 9.58 days of mean survival time (MST). Receiver operating characteristic curve analyses of SI in patients with DLOC revealed that a survival time of less than three days was most reliably predicted. In Part 2, an increase in SI statistically decreased survival time. The upper 95% CIs of the calculated mean survival time for DLOC patients with SI ≥ 1.0 were less than one week. Bootstrap analyses revealed that the 95% CIs of the predicted survival time were 4.54-6.18 days in DLOC patients with SI = 1.0.
Conclusion: An SI ≥ 1.0 along with DLOC is a highly reliable tool for predicting short-term survival time in terminal cancer patients.
Keywords: Palliative care; health status indicators; neoplasms; prognosis; vital signs.
Copyright © 2016 American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.