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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| A systematic review of the scientific evidence for the efficacy of a palliative care approach in advanced dementia | | Author(s) | E L Sampson, C W Ritchie, R Lai |
| Journal title | International Psychogeriatrics, vol 17, no 1, March 2005 |
| Pages | pp 31-40 |
| Source | http://journals.cambridge.org |
| Keywords | Dementia ; Terminal care ; Literature reviews. |
| Annotation | Patients with dementia often receive poor end-of-life care with inadequate pain control and without access to palliative care services that patients with cancer are offered. This has been identified as an area of need in recent UK reports (e.g. National Service Framework for Older People, NSF, Standard Two) and by the Alzheimer's Society (UK). The authors' objective was to perform a systematic review of the scientific literature regarding the efficacy of a palliative care model for patients with dementia. Data sources included Medline, EMBASE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, British Nursing Index, AMED, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Web of Science, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial register, the NHS Economic Evaluation Database, and the System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe (SIGLE). Other data was sourced from hand searches of papers identified on electronic databases and review articles. The search identified 30 review articles, but only 4 papers were eligible for full approval, and only 2 of these met full criteria for inclusion. These papers gave equivocal evidence of the efficacy for a palliative model of care in dementia. Despite the increased interest in palliative care for patients with dementia, there is currently little evidence on which to base such an approach. This may in part be due to ethical difficulties surrounding such research, prognostic uncertainty in clinicians and the lack of clear outcome measures for patients who are unable to express their needs or wishes. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-050609201 A |
| Classmark | EA: LV: 64A |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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