Oral dryness and moisture degree at the lingual but not buccal mucosa predict prognosis in end-of-life cancer patients.

PURPOSE: The aim of this study is to investigate the association of oral dryness with overall survival and determine the threshold points of moisture degree for predicting 7-day survival in palliative care patients.

METHODS

A total of 147 consecutive palliative care patients were included between January 2017 and November 2018. Oral dryness at the lingual and buccal mucosa was measured using an oral moisture-checking device. Overall survival was compared between patients with and without oral dryness using Kaplan-Meier curves with a log-rank test. Prediction accuracy was evaluated by the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and the area under the curve (AUC).

RESULTS

Median survival (95% confidence interval) in patients with oral dryness at the lingual mucosa was shorter than that in patients without oral dryness (17 [11-24] days vs. 28 [22-37] days, log-rank test, p <0.001), but not at the buccal mucosa. Time-dependent ROC revealed that the AUCs for 7-, 14-, 21-, and 28-day survival predictions were 0.72, 0.68, 0.61, and 0.59 with a cutoff value of 19.2%, respectively. The prevalence of performance status (PS) 4 and oxygen administration in the 7-day death group were higher than those in the non-7-day death group. A stratified analysis indicated that moisture degree <19.2% showed fair predictive performance with an AUC of 0.74 and 0.74, in the case of PS ≤3 or without oxygen administration.

CONCLUSION

Oral dryness was associated with increased risk of mortality in palliative care patients. Moisture degree <19.2% at the lingual mucosa predicted less than 7-day survival.