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@ARTICLE{Rakua:276803,
author = {Rakuša, Elena and Reinke, Constantin and Doblhammer,
Gabriele and Radbruch, Lukas and Schmid, Matthias and
Welchowski, Thomas},
title = {{D}ementia as a predictor of palliative care: {U}ncovering
patient patterns based on {G}erman claims data.},
journal = {BMC palliative care},
volume = {24},
number = {1},
issn = {1472-684X},
address = {London},
publisher = {BioMed Central},
reportid = {DZNE-2025-00328},
pages = {46},
year = {2025},
abstract = {Palliative care aims to ensure a dignified and
self-determined life for people facing the end of life.
While palliative care is established for tumor diseases,
it's notably absent from German medical guidelines for other
progressive diseases with an unfavorable prognosis such as
dementia. This study will identify predictors of palliative
care use in older patients and explore how these predictors
relate to the probability of palliative care.We used data
from the largest German health insurance company of people
over 50 years of age from the period 2014-2019. The analysis
focused on the last year of life. Outcomes were outpatient
and inpatient palliative care and predictors were
demographics, comorbidities, therapeutic remedies and
rehabilitation, care and medical interventions, medication
and patient group. Combined logistic regression models and
discrete conditional inference survival forests were used to
predict the utilization of outpatient and inpatient
palliative care. For evaluation we used concordance-index
and calibration plots. We identified the most important
predictors by using a permutation approach and the log-loss
metric.The study cohort for the analysis of inpatient
palliative care comprised 43,896 patients, while the cohort
for the analysis of outpatient palliative care included a
total of 37,430 patients. The models had appropriate
discriminatory power (inpatient palliative care:
concordance-index = 0.737 $(95\%CI$ = 0.721-0.754);
outpatient palliative care: concordance-index = 0.689;
$95\%CI$ = 0.675-0.704) and showed appropriate calibration.
A diagnosis of dementia, like a diagnosis of cancer, is
predictive of inpatient palliative care and outpatient
palliative care. We observed a lower probability for
inpatient and for outpatient palliative care for dementia
patients compared to cancer patients.The findings highlight
the need to focus palliative care on other patient groups
besides cancer patients, such as dementia patients, and to
facilitate access for all patients.},
keywords = {Humans / Palliative Care: methods / Palliative Care:
statistics $\&$ numerical data / Palliative Care: standards
/ Germany / Female / Male / Aged / Dementia: therapy /
Middle Aged / Aged, 80 and over / Cohort Studies / Insurance
Claim Review: statistics $\&$ numerical data / Dementia
(Other) / End-of-life (Other) / Machine learning (Other) /
Palliative care (Other) / Predictions (Other)},
cin = {AG Doblhammer / AG Schmid Bonn},
ddc = {610},
cid = {I:(DE-2719)1012002 / I:(DE-2719)1013028},
pnm = {354 - Disease Prevention and Healthy Aging (POF4-354) / 353
- Clinical and Health Care Research (POF4-353)},
pid = {G:(DE-HGF)POF4-354 / G:(DE-HGF)POF4-353},
typ = {PUB:(DE-HGF)16},
pubmed = {pmid:39966759},
doi = {10.1186/s12904-025-01672-y},
url = {https://pub.dzne.de/record/276803},
}