Comfort in palliative sedation (Compas): a transdisciplinary mixed method study protocol for linking objective assessments to subjective experiences.

ABSTRACT:

Background

In case of untreatable suffering at the end of life, palliative sedation may be chosen to assure comfort by reducing the patient's level of consciousness. An important question here is whether such sedated patients are completely free of pain. Because these patients cannot communicate anymore, caregivers have to rely on observation to assess the patient's comfort. Recently however, more sophisticated techniques from the neurosciences have shown that sometimes consciousness and pain are undetectable with these traditional behavioral methods. The aim of this study is to better understand how unconscious palliative sedated patients experience the last days of their life and to find out if they are really free of pain.

Methods

In this study we will observe 40 patients

SUBMITTER: Six S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5907466 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature