Referral criteria to specialist palliative care for patients with dementia: A systematic review

Abstract

Background: Patients with dementia often have significant symptom burden and a progressive course of functional deterioration. Specialist palliative care referral may be helpful, but it is unclear who and when patients should be referred. We conducted a systematic review of the literature to examine referral criteria for palliative care among patients with dementia. Methods: We searched Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid Embase, Ovid PsycInfo, Cochrane Library, PubMed, and CINAHL databases for articles from inception to December 3, 2019, related to specialist palliative care referral for dementia. Two investigators independently reviewed the citations for inclusion, extracted the referral criteria, and cate..