Trends in Multiple Myeloma–Related Inpatient Mortality
Posted: Friday, August 6, 2021
According to research presented in BMC Cancer, patients with multiple myeloma are more likely to die in the hospital than are members of the general population, though inpatient mortality for this patient group has been decreasing since 2002. Patients with multiple myeloma who die in the hospital often have a substantial need for blood transfusions and experience an increased infection burden.
“Facilitating access to blood transfusions as part of hospice can increase hospice enrollment and decrease the burden and cost of these hospitalizations,” concluded Ghulam Rehman Mohyuddin, MD, of the Kansas University Medical Center, Kansas City, and colleagues.
The study gathered data from all patients with multiple myeloma who were discharged from hospital care and whose information was collected by the National Inpatient Sample (NIS) between 2002 and 2017. A total of 1,446,809 multiple myeloma hospitalizations were estimated by the NIS to have occurred during this period, with an estimated 85,816 (6.3%) resulting in death. Between 2002 and 2017, 47.4% of all multiple myeloma–related deaths occurred in hospitals. As the Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported 180,927 multiple myeloma–related deaths across all settings in this period, a total of 47.4% of all multiple myeloma–related deaths in the United States occurred in a hospital setting. In comparison, the inpatient mortality rate for all causes of death was 35.1% in 2014, down from 48.0% in 2000.
Of the overall multiple myeloma–related inpatient deaths, just 0.64% occurred in patients receiving chemotherapy. Among patients with multiple myeloma who died in the hospital, 32.7% required blood transfusions and 47.8% experienced infection. Palliative care and hospice involvement rates have improved over the study period, rising from 5.3% in 2002 to 31.4% in 2017, as multiple myeloma death rates in hospital settings decline.
Disclosure: For full disclosures of the study authors, visit bmccancer.biomedcentral.com.
