Palliative care interventions in intensive care unit patients

Integrating palliative care in critical care is advocated as a way to mitigate physical and psychological burdens for patients and their families and improve end-of-life care.

Despite the emerging literature published that supports this positive association, the quality of evidence remains limited, in large part due to limitations in the definition of interventions, poor precision of effect estimates and the large variation in study designs.

In a systematic review, Dr Victoria Metaxa et al. highlight the heterogeneous interventions and diverse outcome metrics used and propose a new classification of interventions to facilitate future comparisons.

Follow our conversation with Dr Victoria Metaxa and Dr Christiane Hartog in the following podcast.

Speakers:

Ahmed ZAHER. Oxford University Hospitals (UK). ESICM Next Committee member.

Victoria METAXA. King’s College Hospital, London (UK).

Christiane HARTOG. Charité Universitätsmedizin, Berlin (DE).