An overview of the use of drugs in palliative care settings worldwide
, 2, 2
Abstract
Introduction: To provide an overview of drug use in palliative care worldwide and to identify the most
commonly used medicines in palliative care settings.
Methods: Quasi–systematic review. Search strategy: Medline/PubMed, Embase, SCOPUS and Google
Scholar were searched utilizing the selected MeSH terms: palliative care, hospice, drug utilization, and
prescription patterns.
Results: Overall, it is apparent that there is a significant lack of published literature outlining drug usage in
palliative care settings. Twelve sources of information were reviewed from 9 different countries including
Austria (n = 1), Brazil (n = 1), Canada (n = 1), Germany (n = 1), Italy (n = 2), Netherlands (n = 2), Norway
(n = 1), Switzerland (n = 1) and USA (n = 3), as well as a multinational study comparing 11 European countries.
Medication use between countries was similar. The most commonly prescribed classes of medicines
included non-opioid analgesics, opioids, laxatives, sedatives and antipsychotics and the most commonly
prescribed individual drugs comprised morphine, haloperidol, laxatives and paracetamol.
Conclusions: The literature identifies that there is insufficient evidence to describe and compare what drugs
are currently used in palliative care settings worldwide. This is attributed to the lack of recently published
articles leading to a large gap in knowledge in understanding drug utilization practices in palliative care.
Further research is required to address these gaps in knowledge, and identify medication management issues
in palliative care and determining whether there are significant differences in drug management practices.
Palliat Med Pract 2019; 13, 3: 134–141
Keywords: drug utilizationpalliative careprescription patternshospice
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