Palliation, end-of-life care and burns; practical issues, spiritual care and care of the family – A narrative review II

Abstract

Palliative care is the turn from cure as the priority of care to symptom relief and comfort care. Although very little is published in the burn literature on palliative care, guidelines can be gleaned from the general literature on palliative care, particularly for acute surgical and critical care patients. This second article discusses practical issues around palliative care for burn patients, such as pain and fluid management, withdrawal of ventilator support and wound care, as well as spiritual and family issues. This paper forms part two, of two narrative reviews on the topic of palliation, end-of-life care and burns. The first part considered concepts, decision-making and communication. It was published in volume 10, issue 2, June 2020, pages 95–98.

Music Therapy and Spiritual Treatment to Reduce Pain in Patients With Severe Burns

“…Music with appropriate tunes can stimulate the limbic system of the right brain, which regulates emotions, feelings and sensory centers to produce sedative effects and enhance patients' negative emotions. When patients listen to comfortable and sweet-sounding music, they generate pleasant associations, which can create a comfortable mood and a contented mood to relieve anxiety (Dai et al, 2020). This is reinforced by several studies conducted stating that music therapy can relieve pain in various conditions such as in patients with mechanical ventilation assistance, music therapy performed on preoperative patients can effectively relieve acute pain associated with surgery, and other studies show that music therapy can help reduce anxiety, pain and opioid use during surgical dressing changes in burn patients (Ernsten et al, 2019;Rohilla et al, 2018).…”