Analgesic treatments in people with dementia - how safe are they? A systematic review.

This article presents a systematic review of the current evidence for safety and tolerability of analgesic drugs from randomized controlled trials in people with dementia. Relevant trials were identified by a literature search in the EMBASE, MEDLINE and Cochrane databases from inception to November 2018. The search included the main terms 'dementia' and 'analgesic' or their subterms, and was filtered to limit results to clinical trials. Expert opinion: Although pain treatment is increasingly recognized as an important clinical issue in people with advanced dementia, there is currently a lack of evidence to support safety evaluations of commonly used analgesics in this group. To inform treatment decisions and enable care providers to appropriately monitor patients at risk of adverse effects, it is necessary to conduct well-designed clinical trials to investigate the relative efficacy and safety of analgesics in people with dementia, with particular emphasis on harmful effects of long-term opioid use as well as short-term use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. PMID: 31038371 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Expert Opinion on Drug Safety - Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Tags: Expert Opin Drug Saf Source Type: research