• Álvaro Sanz Rubiales, Francisco Barón Duarte, and María Luisa del Valle Rivero.
• Hospital Universitario del Río Hortega. Valladolid.Oncología Médica. Hospital Universitario del Río Hortega c/ Dulzaina, 1 - 47012 Valladolid. asrubiales@hotmail.com.
• Cuad Bioet. 2015 Jan 1; 26 (86): 111-6.

AbstractPalliative sedation in defined as the deliberate reduction in the level of consciousness of the patient by administering the appropriate drugs in order to avoid intense suffering caused by one or more refractory symptoms; sedation in the patient who is in his last days or hours of life is assumed to be continuous and as deep as needed. Clinical experience shows specific situations where it is likely that there is some confusion of terms. We could erroneously understand as palliative sedation the cases of symptomatic treatment of hyperactive delirium in a patient in its last days (a situation that sometimes is presented as the first cause of palliative sedation) or those in which it is carried out a progressive increase in the palliative treatment that often have a sedative effect, parallel to the increased severity of symptoms because of disease progression in severe ill patients. In both scenarios, sedating drugs are used to relieve end-of-life clinical complications and suffering but the circumstances of the patient, the goal of these treatments, and the way they are used do not match the definition of sedation.

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