Cuidados paliativos na cardiologia

Abstract

The current model of palliative care aims to provide comfort and alleviate suffering from the early stages of an incurable disease through appropriate measures of pain control and other symptoms of physical, psychological, and/or spiritual origin. Disease-modifying therapies can work together with palliative care, aiming to achieve the best possible quality of life for the sick person as well as for their families. However, despite 40% of people worldwide who would benefit from palliative care being affected by cardiovascular diseases, the topic is rarely discussed in the field of cardiology, being neglected in both academic training and clinical practice of healthcare professionals (Biazon and Pavan, 2021). Seeking to understand how healthcare professionals in cardiology services that offer palliative care operate and to understand the reasons for the difficulty in establishing this practice in the field of cardiology, this study was conducted through an integrative review of the literature and exploratory in nature, using articles published from 2010 to 2020, in the databases of Lilacs and PubMed. The descriptors "palliative care," "cardiology," "patient care," "cuidados paliativos," and "cardiologia" were used respectively. In the end, four articles were selected for analysis considering the proposed objectives, with three articles taken from the Lilacs platform and one article from the PubMed platform. It was possible to verify that there are few published studies that depict the role of healthcare professionals in palliative care in the cardiology contexto. The analyzed articles portray a strong tendency to indicate and offer this therapy only to patients in the terminal stage. It was possible to identify that healthcare teams still have a fragmented, hierarchical, and paternalistic approach in providing palliative care to patients with cardiac conditions, which indicates a significant deficit in the preparation of healthcare professionals to deal with issues related to the death and dying process. These challenges highlight the need for a more integrated, patient-centered, and evidence-based approach to palliative care in the field of cardiology. In addition to the true inclusion of palliative care in the curricula of undergraduate courses in healthcare, and the development of training programs for professionals, so that they can effectively approach issues related not only to end-of-life care but also to palliative care from the moment of diagnosis.