This is a practical, easily accessible A-Z of the common drugs encountered in palliative care.

While palliative care has adopted a holistic approach to treatment, medication driven symptom management ostensibly forms the critical aspect of care. Pharmacological therapy can be extremely complex because these patients often have coexisting medical conditions in addition to symptoms caused by their terminal disease. The resulting polypharmacy can be daunting for professionals and can negatively impact on effectiveness of care. Fully revised and updated, the second edition of Drugs in Palliative Care is a detailed yet concise handbook that will appeal to a variety of healthcare professionals involved in the provision of palliative care and medicines information. Divided into three sections it begins with an overview of pharmacology and prescribing advice then contains over 160 monographs of palliative care drugs, in an easy to use A-Z format.

While palliative care has adopted a holistic approach to treatment, medication driven symptom management ostensibly forms the critical aspect of care. Prescribing in palliative care can be extremely complex because the patient may often have comorbidity, or occasionally multimorbidity. The associated polypharmacy further complicates the pharmacological management of symptoms being caused by the palliative condition. This can be daunting for healthcare professionals and can negatively impact upon the effectiveness of care provided. Fully revised and updated, the third edition of Drugs in Palliative Care provides an accessible and succinct overview of the main drugs that are encountered in palliative care clinical practice. The text begins by providing a clinical pharmacology overview and prescribing guidance, then contains over 160 monographs of palliative care drugs, in an easy to access A-Z format.

The book’s main contribution is its interdisciplinary approach to the issue of sedation at the end-of-life. Because it occurs at the end of life, palliative sedation raises a number of important ethical and legal questions, including whether it is a covert form of euthanasia and for what purposes it may legally be used. Many of the book chapters address the first question and almost all deal with a specific form of the second: whether palliative sedation should be used for those experiencing “existential suffering”? This raises the question of what existential suffering is, a topic that is also discussed in the book. The different chapters address these issues from the perspectives of the relevant disciplines: Palliative Medicine, Bioethics, Law and Theology. Hence, helpful accounts of the clinical and historical background for this issue are provided and the importance of drawing accurate ethical and legal distinctions is stressed throughout the whole book. So the volume represents a valuable contribution to the emerging literature on this topic and should be helpful across a broad spectrum of readers: philosophers, theologians and physicians.

This handbook offers a practical, thorough approach to the clinical practice of palliative care. Adding North American authors to its roster of UK contributors, the third edition of this award-winning book addresses important changes in the evidence base of palliative care, as well as an emphasis on end-of-life community-based care. It features new chapters on dementia and advance care planning, a simplified lymphoedema discussion, and an ongoing commitment to providing essential guidance for physicians, nurses, and all primary care providers involved in palliative care in hospital, hospice, and community settings.

This book serves as a valuable reference source, providing a comprehensive review of syringe driver use and administration of drugs via CSCI, a safe and effective way of drug administration when other routes are inappropriate.