3.5 Mortality
In-hospital death was recorded for 44 patients (4.8%). The median age for the 44 deaths was 82 (IQR 66.5-88.5). Among the mortalities, 26 were male patients. The causes of hospitalization were pneumonia in 28 cases, poor general status in 11, heart failure in 2, renal failure in 2, and acute exacerbation of COPD in 1. One patient was transferred to the hospital in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest; for this patient, the actual cause of death was unknown.
Univariate analysis identified two variables (nursing home resident and obesity) with p values < 0.10; these variables were incorporated into the multivariate analysis. Both of these factors were thought to be independent predictors of in-hospital mortality (Table 4): nursing home resident yielded an OR 6.554, 95% CI 2.663-16.127, andp <0.0001, while obesity yielded an OR 24.343, 95% CI 3.331-177.885, and p = 0.017.