Table 1

Sociodemographic and medical characteristics of the patients*

	N	Per cent
Sex
Male	27	61
Female	17	39
Marital status
Married/cohabiting	32	73
Single/widowed/divorced	11	44
Missing	1	2
Living situation
With others	32	73
Alone	12	27
Education
Compulsory or less	17	39
High school graduate	15	34
College/university	11	25
Missing	1	2
Diagnoses
Gastrointestinal	18	41
Lung	11	25
Urological	7	16
Other†	8	18
Metastatic disease‡
Presence of metastases	40	91
Site of metastases
Liver	21	48
Lymph nodes	17	39
Bone	13	30
Lung	12	27
Brain	7	16
Tumour-directed treatment, ongoing upon admission
Chemotherapy	14	32
Hormones	3	6
	Median	Range
Age	66	53–89
Survival
Overall survival§, days from first study entry	50	1–500, 95% CI 51 to 115

*N=44, the number of individual patients accounting for the 50 emergency admissions.
†Breast (3), malignant melanoma (2), gynaecological (2) and unspecified (1).
‡Percentages exceed 100 because of the multiple sites per patient.
§N=43, one patient was still alive at follow-up.