The symptom burden of seriously ill hospitalized patients

We studied symptom burden and associated factors in a cohort of 1582 seriou sly ill patients admitted at five tertiary care academic centers in the U.S . between June 1989 and June 1991 in the SUPPORT Study. Logistic regression was used to test the independent association of symptoms with demographic, psychological, chronic, and acute illness measures. Pain, dyspnea, anxiety , and depression caused the greatest symptom burden. The following symptoms accounted for 67.3% of all symptoms that were at least moderately severe a t least had of the time: dyspnea (19.2%), pain (17.6%), pain/dyspnea (7.6%) , anxiety (5.9%), depression (5.0%), anxiety/depression (4.4%), anxiety/dep ression/pain/dyspnea (3.9%), and nausea (3.7%). Hospital, male gender, dise ase category, more comorbidities, more dependencies in activities of daily living prior to illness, and poorer quality of life were associated with gr eater symptom burden. Seriously ill patients have a high symptom burden. Be tter strategies will be needed to control symptoms in these patients. (C) U .S. Cancer Pain Relief Committee, 1999.