Drugs used in palliative medicine

Abstract

palliative treatment applies to people already burdened with surgery, chemotherapy, or simply their advanced age and the accompanying diseases. Regarding author's clinical experience, it is often the case that terminally ill patients have a significantly lowered seizure threshold, unstable glycemic level, high or low blood pressure. In fact, these may be the consequences of numerous other drugs, organic brain damage, and often metastatic tumors. This fact should also be taken into account when determining the standard of pharmacotherapy. The use of individual pharmacological agents is, however, primarily determined by the clinical condition of the patient, the simultaneous administration of other pharmaceuticals, or simply the clinical sense and experience of the physician. There is no one or rigidly specified procedure. There are situations when patients are simply unable to receive the medicine orally, in which case the main criterion becomes a form that allows intravenous or intramuscular administration, and not the most appropriate clinical profile. It should be remembered that among medicines used in psychiatry not always a form other than oral is obvious.