Analysis of death causes of in-patients with malignant tumors in Sichuan Cancer Hospital of China from 2002 to 2012.

OBJECTIVES To analyze underlying disease, fatality rate and the major causes of death of in-patients with malignant tumors in Sichuan Cancer Hospital. METHODS Clinical data of in-patients from 2002 to 2012 were retrospectively analyzed. RESULTS The top 10 tumors (82.0%of the total) of the malignant tumors of the in- patients were lung, cervical, esophagus, breast, colorectal, nasopharynx, liver and gastric cancers, lymphomas and ovarian cancers. The overall fatality rate was 2.7% during these eleven years, 3.4% and 2.0% for male and females, respectively with statistical significance for the difference (χ2=164.737, P<0.001). The top 10 death causes were lung cancer, liver cancer, colorectal cancer, esophagus cancer, gastric cancer, lymphoma, breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer and nasopharynx cancer. In-patients with pancreatic cancer had the highest fatality rate (9.6%). There were different ranks of death causes in different sex groups and age groups. CONCLUSION Prevention and control work of cancer should be enhanced not only for cancers with high incidence such as lung cancer, esophageal cancer but also for the cancers which have low incidence but high fatality rate, such as pancreatic cancer and gallbladder cancer, which would help to improve the survival rate and quality of life of cancer patients in the future.