Indications for palliative sedation in patients with advanced oncological disease admitted to the Divina Providencia Hospital, from November 2014 to April 2015

Abstract

The objective of this research work was to know the most frequent indications for palliative sedation in patients -men and women- who were admitted to a palliative care unit, as well as oncological diagnoses, the type of sedation and the doses administered, and to determine if adequate symptom control was achieved. This is relevant because there are no national data regarding this therapy. The type of research was descriptive, with a retrospective design in which a review of the records of patients admitted to the Divina Providencia Palliative Care Hospital in El Salvador was carried out, from November 2014 to April 2015. non-probabilistic convenience sample of 49 patients. According to the data obtained, it was observed that 30% of the patients required palliative sedation without gender difference; it was also established that 69.4% of the patients were between 50 and 79 years old. The most frequent indication for administering palliative sedation was dyspnea, with 34.7%, which corresponds to the prevalence of lung cancer, which stood at 12.2%, and lung metastases with 26.5% in most patients. However, the most prevalent oncological disease was gastrointestinal cancer, with 18.4%. More than 80% of the patients admitted in the period of time reviewed received continuous and deep palliative sedation.