The Relationship between the Items of the Barthel Index and Short-Term Prognosis in Terminal Cancer Patients

Predicting the short-term prognosis of patients with terminal cancer is important for treatment decisions and improving patients’ quality of life. Recently, it has been reported that the Barthel Index (BI) can predict short-term prognosis. This study aimed to distinguish the BI items that can more accurately predict the short-term prognosis of terminal cancer patients from among the other BI items. This study compared the accuracy of predicting the 1-, 2-, and 3-week prognosis of BI and individual BI items in 158 cancer patients who died between January 2018 and June 2020 at the Onomichi Municipal Hospital in Japan. For predicting the 1- and 2-week prognosis, the BI item “feeding” scores of 0/5 and 10 showed higher accuracies (0.766 and 0.715, respectively) than BI scores between 0–15 and 20–100. For predicting a 3-week prognosis, the BI item “mobility” scores of 0, 5/10, 15 and the BI item “grooming” scores between 0–5 showed higher accuracies (0.627 and 0.614, respectively) than BI scores between 0–35 and 40–100. BI and individual BI items may be an option for prognostic prediction in terminal cancer patients.