Palliative sedation

Common card · No. 284984

In medicine, specifically in end-of-life care, palliative sedation (also known as terminal sedation, continuous deep sedation, or sedation for intractable distress of a dying patient) is the palliative practice of relieving distress in a terminally ill person in the last hours or days of a dying person's life, usually by means of a continuous intravenous or subcutaneous infusion of a sedative drug, or by means of a specialized catheter designed to provide comfortable and discreet administration of ongoing medications via the rectal route. Sometimes palliative sedation results in only a light unconsciousness, in which the patient may still be somewhat aware of the presence of others. In other cases it results in a deep unconsciousness, like coma. As of 2013, approximately tens of millions of people a year were unable to resolve their needs of physical, psychological, or spiritual suffering at their time of death. Due to the amount of pain a dying person may face, palliative care is considered...

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