“…Firstly, it may be questioned to what extent patient records reflect true practice and whether they are filled in adequately (Rietjens et al, 2008). However, a retrospective study design based on patient records is often used in studies concerning palliative sedation practice (Dean et al, 2014;Endrizzi et al, 2017;McKinnon et al, 2014;Rietjens et al, 2008;Schur et al, 2016). Secondly, in patient records some patient characteristics (e.g., awareness of prognosis, Karnofsky-score) were reported only with reference to the moment of hospice admission, and they may not reflect the patient condition at the time of palliative sedation discussion.…”