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Is self-rated health an independent prognostic factor of six-week mortality in older patients hospitalized for an acute condition?

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Abstract

Purpose

To determine whether self-rated health is a prognostic factor of six-week mortality, independently of other known objective prognostic factors.

Methods

The SAFMA study was a prospective cohort, which recruited patients from the University Hospital of Martinique Acute Care for Elders unit (French West Indies) from January to June 2012. Patients aged 75 or older and hospitalized for an acute condition were eligible. The outcome was time to death within the six-week follow-up. The main explanatory variable was self-rated health. Sociodemographic and clinical characteristics were considered as covariates. Cox’s proportional hazards model was used.

Results

The mean age of the 223 patients included was 85.1 ± 5.5 years. Six-week mortality rate was 14.8 %; none were lost to follow-up. In total, 123 claimed “very good to good” health, and 100 “medium to very poor” health. Self-rated health was the only independent prognostic factor associated with 6-week mortality (hazard ratio 2.61; 95 % confidence interval 1.18–5.77; p = .02), when adjusting for known prognostic factors such as age, dimensions of the comprehensive geriatric assessment and comorbidity burden.

Conclusion

The association between self-rated health and short-term mortality could have implications for clinical practice, particularly in helping in the estimation of prognosis in acute care setting.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Geva Maimon for her editorial assistance.

Authors’ contributions

All the authors met the ICMJE criteria to be considered as authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Family Medicine, McGill University, 5858, Chemin de la Côte-des-Neiges, 3rd floor, Montreal, QC, H3S 1Z1, Canada

    Claire Godard-Sebillotte

  2. Faculty of Medicine, University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, EA 3797, Reims, France

    Moustapha Dramé

  3. Department of Research and Innovation, University Hospitals of Reims, Robert Debré Hospitals, 51092, Reims, France

    Moustapha Dramé

  4. Department of Geriatrics, Martinique General Hospital, Fort-De-France, France

    Tatiana Basileu, Jean-Luc Fanon & Lidvine Godaert

Authors
  1. Claire Godard-Sebillotte
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  2. Moustapha Dramé
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  3. Tatiana Basileu
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  4. Jean-Luc Fanon
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  5. Lidvine Godaert
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Claire Godard-Sebillotte.

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Conflict of interest

All the authors declare no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Godard-Sebillotte, C., Dramé, M., Basileu, T. et al. Is self-rated health an independent prognostic factor of six-week mortality in older patients hospitalized for an acute condition?. Qual Life Res 25, 2335–2340 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-016-1252-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-016-1252-3

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