Sage Palliative Medicine & Chronic Care

This episode features Professor María Arantzamendi (Institute for Culture and Society-ATLANTES, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain). In the context of patients with incurable disease palliative sedation is used for refractory symptom control. A minority of articles measure the effect of palliative sedation and current assessment of parameters of such effect is limited. The literature about palliative sedation measurement has mainly focused on medication use and level of sedation. Discomfort Scale-dementia of Alzheimer Type (DS-DAT) and Patient Comfort Score (PCS) are assessment instruments being used to measure the effect of palliative sedation on patient comfort, the latter being validated for palliative care context. There is limited evidence on the timing of assessment, reported use ranges from daily assessment to six times per day, with often hourly measurements until adequate sedation is achieved. There is limited data available on the training and preparation of the health professional who has th