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Early Warning Score and Cancer Patients at End-of-Life

As the average life expectancy increases, there is also a growing interest in how to organize the rest of life of the elderly. As end-of-life becomes important, predicting the last few days of end-of-life in terminal cancer patients and preparing death for patients and their families could be meaningful in a super-aged society in the future. It is difficult to accurately predict the remaining life expectancy for terminal cancer patients. An early warning score (EWS) is an simple indicator aimed at detecting clinical deterioration to improve patient safety in hospitals. This was developed to quantify the abnormal levels of vital signs and patients with sudden deterioration in the early stage. EWS is closely related with short-term mortality or acute exacerbations in patients, such as intensive care unit admissions. Therefore, applying the EWS to terminal cancer patients at end-of-life time, it can be considered that it has the potential to be used as an auxiliary indicator to inform that the death of patients is impending.