[Palliative care for people with advanced Parkinson's disease. A systematic review]

Palliative care refers to treatment aimed at the early and comprehensive identification of pain and other physical, psychosocial and spiritual problems that limit the quality of life of the person, their family and their caregivers. The aim of this article is to identify palliative interventions used for the assessment and control of symptoms in people with advanced Parkinson's disease (PD).

A systematic review of the literature was conducted following the steps proposed by Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). The search was guided by a structured review question and included original studies of patients with advanced PD published in databases such as Medline and Google Scholar between 2010 and 2021.

Thirty-one full-text studies were reviewed and 12 were excluded due to not meeting quality criteria. A total of 19 papers were included in this systematic review, which identified 10 clinical tools to assess palliative needs in advanced PD, four pharmacological interventions, and three non-pharmacological interventions focused on reducing motor symptoms, improving quality of life and avoiding the on/off state. One study reported the referral of patients to complementary and device-assisted therapies.

As part of the palliative approach, a set of tools for identifying symptoms and assessing palliative care needs have been described. Interventions in advanced PD focus on the control of motor and non-motor symptoms so as to reduce the impact of the disease on quality of life.