-
J Pain Symptom Manage · Jan 2011
Palliative sedation, not slow euthanasia: a prospective, longitudinal study of sedation in Flemish palliative care units.
- Patricia Claessens, Johan Menten, Paul Schotsmans, Bert Broeckaert, and Palsed Consortium.
- Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Law, Catholic University Leuven, Drongen, Belgium.
- J Pain Symptom Manage. 2011 Jan 1;41(1):14-24.
ContextPalliative sedation remains a much debated and controversial issue. The limited literature on the topic often fails to answer ethical questions concerning this practice.ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to describe the characteristics of patients who are being sedated for refractory symptoms in palliative care units (PCUs) from the time of admission until the day of death.MethodsA prospective, longitudinal, descriptive design was used to assess data in eight PCUs. The total sample consisted of 266 patients. Information on demographics, medication, food and fluid intake, decision making, level of consciousness, and symptom experience were gathered by nurses and researchers three times a week. If patients received palliative sedation, extra information was gathered.ResultsOf all included patients (n=266), 7.5% received palliative sedation. Sedation started, on average, 2.5 days before death and for half of these patients, the form of sedation changed over time. At the start of sedation, patients were in the end stage of their illness and needed total care. Patients were fully conscious and had very limited oral food or fluid intake. Only three patients received artificial fluids at the start of sedation. Patients reported, on average, two refractory symptoms, the most important ones being pain, fatigue, depression, drowsiness, and loss of feeling of well-being. In all cases, the patient gave consent to start palliative sedation because of increased suffering.ConclusionThis study revealed that palliative sedation is only administered in exceptional cases where refractory suffering is evident and for those patients who are close to the ends of their lives. Moreover, this study supports the argument that palliative sedation has no life-shortening effect.Copyright © 2011 U.S. Cancer Pain Relief Committee. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?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.
.