Most cancer deaths among adolescents and young adults occurred in a hospital, according to a retrospective, population-based analysis of more than 35,000 such deaths in California. There was a 5-year shift to more in-home deaths that subsided after 1995. Investigators analyzed death records of patients with cancer aged 15 to 39 years who died between 1989 and 2011. They looked at sociodemographic and clinical factors linked with hospital death. Among the results:

• 57% died in a hospital, 33% at home, and 10% in hospice or nursing facilities.
• Between 1989 and 1994, the hospital death rate decreased from 68% to 54%; the at-home death rate increased from 17% to 34%.
• These rates were stable between 1995 and 2011.
• Patients <30 years of age, minorities in general, Hispanics, those who lived ≤10 miles from a specialty center, and those with leukemia or lymphoma were more likely to die in the hospital.