Palliative sedation for intolerable suffering

Abstract

Purpose of review: The purpose of this review is to provide an update on palliative sedation in palliative and end-of-life care. Palliative sedation is the medical procedure used to deal with refractory symptoms in advanced cancer patients when all other specific approaches have failed.

Recent findings: Palliative sedation, in the strictest sense of the term, is a proportionate (proportionate palliative sedation, PPS) and intrinsically variable procedure used on an individual basis to relieve refractory symptoms in terminally ill patients, without the intention of hastening death. Completely separate from any other end-of-life decision and not intended to hasten death, palliative sedation has been shown not to have a detrimental impact on survival.

Summary: To maintain palliative sedation as a legitimate clinical procedure from any ethical or clinical point of view, it must be limited to the restricted area for which it was conceived, that is, relief from refractory suffering as deemed necessary by a patient and by an experienced palliative care team. In this way, there is no risk of associating palliative sedation with other end-of-life decisions. Close collaboration is needed between oncologists and palliative care physicians for this clinical procedure.