[Place of death in Andalusia: influence of age, gender and cause of death]

Aim: To know the place of death and its relationship to age, gender and causes of death.

Material and methods: A cross-sectional analysis of national population data using 31,463 deaths derived from Official Statistics on Mortality in Andalusia for the year 2009 was carried out. The variables studied were place of death (hospital, home or care home), age, gender and cause of mortality. Odds ratio adjusted by gender, age and cause of mortality using a multinomial logistic regression model. Place of death was chosen as dependent variable and age, gender and cause of death as independent ones.

Results: The place of death was hospital (61%), home (31%) and care home (8%). The higher the age, the higher the percentage of deaths at home and especially in care homes. Deaths in care homes are related to age (OR: 1,054; 95%CI: 1,049-1,059) and central nervous system (OR: 2,221; 95%CI: 1,826-2,071) and endocrine diseases (OR: 1,391; 95%CI: 1,141-1,697). There is a lower likelihood of dying at home due to digestive diseases (OR: 0,272; 95%CI: 0.23-0.32), genitourinary diseases (OR: 0.54; 95%CI: 0.44-0.65) and respiratory diseases (OR: 0.73; 95%CI: 0.64-0.82).

Conclusions: Most Andalusians die in the hospital and increasing age has been found to be associated with higher probability of dying at home or in care homes. There are differences between death causes regarding place of death.