[Emergency medical care of terminally ill patients]

3 % of all emergency calls in Germany are related to terminally ill cancer patients. It was the aim of this investigation to prospectively include over a lenghty period all emergency calls from cancer patients in the final stage of their disease, to elucidate the specific features of these calls and to compare them with calls of other reasons.

All "palliative emergency contacts" during a period of six years were included and compared with emergency applications of other causes.

63 emergency calls by cancer patients or their relatives were analysed (3.9 % of all emergency calls). The effort made and the care given to these patients differed significantly from those related to other calls (p < 0.05). Thus acute dyspnoea was the most frequent reason for an emergency call in cancer patients (33.3 % compared with 9.4 %). 93.7 % of the calls were made because of psychosocial strain among the care-giving relatives. Significantly more of these patients were able to remain at home (56.6 %) than in calls for other causes (16.1 %).

Our data demonstrate that the care of cancer patients in the final stage of their disease is an important factor in emergency medicine. For this reason special knowledge of problems arising in relation to end of life care is essential.