An overview of the use of drugs in palliative care settings worldwide

Introduction: To provide an overview of drug use in palliative care worldwide and to identify the mostcommonly used medicines in palliative care settings.Methods: Quasi–systematic review. Search strategy: Medline/PubMed, Embase, SCOPUS and GoogleScholar were searched utilizing the selected MeSH terms: palliative care, hospice, drug utilization, andprescription patterns.Results: Overall, it is apparent that there is a significant lack of published literature outlining drug usage inpalliative care settings. Twelve sources of information were reviewed from 9 different countries includingAustria (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 medicinesincluded non-opioid analgesics, opioids, laxatives, sedatives and antipsychotics and the most commonlyprescribed individual drugs comprised morphine, haloperidol, laxatives and paracetamol.Conclusions: The literature identifies that there is insufficient evidence to describe and compare what drugsare currently used in palliative care settings worldwide. This is attributed to the lack of recently publishedarticles 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 issuesin palliative care and determining whether there are significant differences in drug management practices. Palliat Med Pract 2019; 13, 3: 134–14