Admissions to a radiation oncology inpatient service

Although the care of inpatients is an important aspect of radiation oncology practice in many countries, it has never been studied in detail. The goal of this study was to describe the admissions to a radiation oncology inpatient service over a 1-year period with respect to patient characteristics, primary malignancies, common nonmalignant diagnoses, use of radiotherapy and outcome of admission.

Using computerized hospital databases, we analysed the utilization of 11 radiation oncology beds in a 424-bed teaching hospital from March 31, 1991, to April 1, 1992.

There were 342 admissions of 277 patients. The median age was 66.5 years; the male:female ratio was 1:1. The commonest primary neoplastic diagnoses were lung (42%), gynecological (15%), genitourinary (14%) and breast (8%) cancers. Only 17% of the patients had cancer as the sole diagnosis; most patients had multiple medical diagnoses. Infections (22%), neurological (20%), cardiovascular (13%) and endocrine (9%) conditions were the commonest. Mean length of stay was 11.25 days. Most of the admissions (71%) resulted in discharge to the patient's home; few patients (15%) died. Only half of admissions involved radiotherapy, indicating that the focus of patient care was the medical treatment of cancer complications or other active medical problems.

These data show that radiation oncology inpatients have complicated medical problems, and they support the training of radiation oncologists in the comprehensive medical care of patients.