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In surveys of seriously ill patients, their families, and healthcare providers, freedom from pain is rated highly as a contributor to a good death. In a cross-sectional study based on surveys of a nationally representative sample of community-dwelling older U.S. adults from 1994 to 2006, researchers assessed the prevalence of pain as death approached. Surveys were completed by patients or caregivers. No data on treatment of pain were available.
Data were analyzed for 4700 people who died within 24 months of being interviewed; mean age at death was 76. Twenty-six percent of decedents had been “often troubled” by pain of at least moderate severity 24 months before death. The prevalence held steady until it began rising 4 months before death an…