Fig. 3

Distribution of symptoms in the final illness Informants’ reports describe a complex overlap of multiple symptoms experienced by very old people in their final illness. Illustrates this for participants with any reported symptoms (n = 155 with for whom informants replied “Yes” for at least one symptom; n = 18 with only “No” responses and n = 7 with only “No” or “Don’t know” responses not shown). The majority (61%) of participants were reported to have suffered from at least two of the seven symptoms that the study interviews asked about. For only 10% were none of these symptoms reported, and for a further 4% informants were unsure whether they had suffered any of these symptoms