Mortality within 30 days of systemic anticancer therapy at a tertiary cancer centre: assessing the safety and quality of clinical care.

AIMS

Thirty-day mortality has been proposed to be a useful indicator of avoidable harm to patients from systemic anticancer therapies (SACT). As a quality assurance tool, we assessed the 30-day mortality rate at Auckland City Hospital and compared this with international standards.

METHODS

Clinical characteristics and treatment details of medical oncology patients who died within 30 days of SACT from October 2014-September 2015 were collected and compared with data from a similar series performed from October 2008-September 2009. SACT was limited to chemotherapy or biologic agents.

RESULTS

From October 2014-September 2015, 1,965 patients received 2,145 treatment regimens. Forty-seven patients (2.2%) died within 30 days of SACT. Treatment was given with palliative intent in 42 patients (in 89%) and curative intent in five (11%). Mortality rates did not change with time (2.8% in 2009 vs 2.2% in 2015). Of the patient who died within 30 days, ECOG performance status at the time of chemotherapy was one in 16 patients (34.0%), two in nine patients (19.1%) and 3/4 in nine of the 47 patients (19.1%). All patients treated with curative intent had a PS of 0 or 1. Most patients who died within 30 days were on first- or second-line therapy (45 and 38% respectively). Two-thirds of patients with a PS of 3/4 were receiving first-line therapy. Approximately half the patients died during their first cycle of therapy (48.9%).

CONCLUSIONS

Our local 30-day mortality data compares favourably to international benchmarks of 5% and has not increased over time. Performance of similar studies locally and nationally should be undertaken to continue to assess and improve the quality of our patient care.