Background:
Aim:This study has been carried out descriptive and retrospective on the patients who have cancer diagnosis with the purpose of determining the readmission rate and reasons.
Methods:
Descriptive and retrospective nature of this study sample Hacettepe University Oncology Hospital inpatient clinics in Turkey has composed of 45 elderly individuals. Datas was collected by the "Personal Information Form" that is contained of sociodemographic characteristics and medical properties of elderly individuals. Descriptive statistics were used in the statistical analysis of the datas.
Results:
In this study, the average age of individuals is 69.84 ± 5.56 and 57.8% were male. 86.7% of individuals are married and 95.6% have children. Individuals 42.2% are primary school graduates and 66.7% are retired. 95.6% of individuals live in their home and 62.2% are living with their partners. 15.6% of individuals have lung cancer, 13.3% of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, 11.1% of acute myeloid leukemia, 8.9% of breast cancer and gastric cancer. Individuals have some of chronic diseases without cancer; 80.0% of have at least one chronic disease; of these 24.4% hypertension, 17.8% hypertension and diabetes, 8.9% coronary artery disease. Within one year 66.6% of individuals were hospitalized at least 2 or 3 times, because of 37.8% of fatigue-weakness, 33.3% of nausea-vomiting, 31,1% of dyspnea, 28.9% of anorexia, 26.7% of severe pain, 20% of neutropenic fever.
Conclusions:
In this study, within one year the majority of the elderly hospitalization is at least 2 or 3 times related to fatigue-weakness, nausea-vomiting, dyspnea is determined that these complaints are thought to be due to nature of the disease and side effects of chemotherapy.Therefore, to prevent these patients readmissions when they go back to their homes to cope with the treatments of side effects, patient education and follow-up in their homes fort he symptom control is recommended.