Article Test

In this retrospective investigation carried out in a mutual hospital in Montevideo between 2019 and 2020, a quantitative and descriptive analysis of patients older than eighteen years of age who died during that period was carried out. The main objective was to examine the medical records of these patients during the six months prior to their death, using the NecPal 3.1 instrument to assess their clinical variables. The confidentiality and anonymization of the patient data were carefully protected, and a specific database was created for this study. The results obtained provided a detailed description of the patient population, their palliative needs and the quality of care at the end of their lives. The proposed working hypothesis maintained that palliative care did not reduce unnecessary hospital admissions, with a significance level (p) less than 0.05. During the period studied, 200 deaths were registered, with a predominance of women and a mean age of 73.6 years. Of these deceased, 136 had palliative needs, and of these, 50 were admitted to a palliative care unit. The results revealed that patients who did not receive palliative care experienced a greater number of hospital admissions compared to those who did. This led to rejecting the null hypothesis and demonstrating that palliative care had a significant preventive effect in terms of hospital admissions at the end of life.