[Bronchopulmonary cancers: medical approach of the last weeks of life. Study of 191 patients].

The characteristics of patients with carcinoma of the lung during their last weeks of life were reviewed in 191 patients treated in the same department and who died between September 1982 and January 1985. The main symptoms were breathlessness (112/191) which posed difficult therapeutic problems preventing domiciliary treatment, and pain (87/191) which was more easily managed in the author's experience. The modes of death were also analysed, showing a number of sudden deaths (14). Therapeutic sedatives were the immediate cause of death in 32 cases, in the first part of the study. The authors make a rapid review of the different available palliative measures. This type of study is the only way of changing medical practices and strategies in patients dying in hospital.