COVID-19: Guidance on Palliative care from a European Respiratory Society International Task Force.

Janssen, Daisy J A; Ekström, Magnus; Currow, David C; Johnson, Miriam J; Maddocks, Mathew; Simonds, Anita K; Tonia, Thomy; Marsaa, Kristoffer (2020). COVID-19: Guidance on Palliative care from a European Respiratory Society International Task Force. European respiratory journal, 56(3), p. 2002583. European Respiratory Society 10.1183/13993003.02583-2020

Preview	Text Janssen EurRespirJ 2020_epub.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial (CC-BY-NC). Download (1MB) | Preview
Preview	Text Janssen_EurRespirJ_2020.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution-Noncommercial (CC-BY-NC). Download (504kB) | Preview

BACKGROUND

Many people are dying from COVID-19, but consensus guidance on palliative care in COVID-19 is lacking. This new life-threatening disease has put healthcare systems under pressure, with increased need of palliative care provided to many patients by clinicians with limited prior experience in this field. Therefore, we aimed to make consensus recommendations for palliative care for patients with COVID-19 using the Convergence of Opinion on Recommendations and Evidence (CORE) process.

METHODS

We invited 90 international experts to complete an online survey including stating their agreement, or not, with 14 potential recommendations. At least 70% agreement on directionality was needed to provide consensus recommendations. If consensus was not achieved on the first round, a second round was conducted.

RESULTS

68 experts (75.6%) responded in the first round. Most participants were experts in palliative care, respiratory medicine or critical care medicine. In the first round, consensus was achieved on 13 recommendations based upon indirect evidence and clinical experience. In the second round, 58/68 (85.3%) of the first round experts responded, resulting in consensus also for the 14th recommendation.

CONCLUSIONS

This multi-national task force provides consensus recommendations for palliative care for patients with COVID-19 concerning: advance care planning; (pharmacological) palliative treatment of breathlessness; clinician-patient communication; remote clinician-family communication; palliative care involvement in patients with serious COVID-19; spiritual care; psychosocial care; and bereavement care. Future studies are needed to generate empirical evidence for these recommendations.

Interest & Impact

Downloads

150 since deposited on 22 Jul 2020
15 in the past 12 months

Citations

5 Citations in Web of Science ®
6 Citations in Scopus

Search

in Google Scholar™

Services

Actions (login required)

Edit item

Actions (login required)

Edit item