• Support Care Cancer · Jul 2001

    The use of corticosteroids in home palliative care.

    • S Mercadante, F Fulfaro, and A Casuccio.
    • Pain Relief and Palliative Care Unit, La Maddalena Clinic for Cancer, Palermo, Italy. mercadsa@tin.it
    • Support Care Cancer. 2001 Jul 1;9(5):386-9.

    AbstractEvidence for the effectiveness of corticosteroids in palliative care is anecdotal, and more information is required. From January to December 1999 a total of 376 consecutive patients admitted to a home palliative care program were longitudinally surveyed. Patients who started a corticosteroid treatment after admission on the basis of common indications prescribed by their home care physicians were selected. Fifty patients were enrolled in the study. Dexamethasone, in doses ranging from 4 to 16 mg, was the drug of choice. Corticosteroids were found to be effective in anorexia, weakness, headache, and nausea and vomiting. The reduction of symptom intensity was achieved in less than 3 days on average. However, no great advantages were found in terms of controlling drowsiness or confusional states associated with advanced illness because of cerebral involvement. It can be concluded from this study that: (a) corticosteroids may be effective in controlling anorexia, weakness, headache, and nausea and vomiting associated with cerebral involvement or bowel obstruction; (b) they should be stopped if no therapeutic effect has become evident within 3-5 days; (c) the treatment is not useful when given in the presence of severe neurological impairment resulting from the advanced stage of disease; (d) the range of adverse effects was acceptable for limited periods and in the circumstances in which the preparations were used in this study; and (e) corticosteroids may have an adjuvant role in potentiation of analgesic drugs. These findings will be very useful in the planning of future controlled studies designed to yield evidence-based data on the role of corticosteroids in the relief of specific symptoms.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…

What will the 'Medical Journal of You' look like?

Start your free 21 day trial now.

We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will not be shared.