Paliatívna medicína a liečba bolesti 1/2009

Ethical aspects of palliative sedative therapy

The goal of palliative medicine and palliative care is to relieve suffering from symptoms of not curable and progressing illness. Readiness to treat pain and other unsufferable symptoms is not only the imperative of medicine, but also of morality. As the Canadian expert in bioethics David Roy (1) writes: „Emancipation principle of palliative care” which states: „spare no scientific or clinical effort to free dying persons from twisting and racking pain that invades, dominates and shrivels their consciousness, that leaves them no psychic or mental space for the things they want to think and say and do before they die”.

Keywords: palliative medicine, palliative care, terminal state, palliative sedation, double effect.