| Summary: | Background: Although many Japanese patients wish to take a bath in their last days, the safety of bathing for patients with a prognosis of a few days is not known.
Objective: To examine whether taking a bath affects the survival of advanced cancer patients with prognoses of a few days.
Design: A single-center prospective cohort study.
Setting/Subject: Advanced cancer patients in their last days of life in a palliative care unit of a Japanese hospital. We compared patients who took baths with those who did not. The primary endpoint was 24-hour survival rate.
Result: Among 110 patients eligible for this prospective study, 89 (72%) met the inclusion criteria. Forty-eight patients (43%, 223 person-days) were eligible for analysis. A total of 28 patient-days were classified into the bathing group, and 192 patient-days were classified into the nonbathing group. After propensity score matching, the 24-hour death rate was 10.7% in the bathing group and 8.0% in the nonbathing group, respectively (mean difference 2.8% with 95% confidence interval of ?11.2% to 16.8%, p?=?0.65).
Conclusion: Taking a bath does not appear to bear a significant association with shortening of life among advanced cancer patients in their last days of life.
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