Palliative sedation : the development of a policy and guidelines for the use of Palliative sedation for refractory symptoms in dying patients at Sungardens Hospice, Pretoria

Includes bibliographical references.Sedation in the context of terminal care has been a hotly debated topic for many years. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, the wide variation in its reported use leads to doubts about the appropriateness of the care available in areas with a high percentage of sedation, and secondly, there is the suspicion that terminal sedation is actually a euphemism for euthanasia. Ventafridda's report in 1990 that 52% of moribund patients required sleep-inducing sedation to control physical suffering, stimulated a lot of discussion in palliative care circles with many physicians being surprised at the apparent high percentage of patients needing terminal sedation. This was followed by the publication of studies from various centres throughout the world in an effort to determine current international practice