Ĭontinuous deep sedation until death remains a highly debated medical practice, particularly regarding its potential to hasten death and its proper use in end-of-life care. In the Netherlands, studies found that the prevalence of continuous deep sedation increased from 8.2% in 2005 to 12.3% of all deaths in 2010. In Flanders, the overall prevalence of this practice increased considerably between 20, rising from 8.2% to 14.5% of all deaths.

Large-scale population-based surveys monitoring end-of-life practices on a nationwide scale have so far consistently shown an increased use of continuous deep sedation until death. When terminally ill patients experience unbearable symptoms that cannot be alleviated by conventional treatments, administering drugs to induce unconsciousness can be an option of last resort to relieve suffering. Physicians caring for patients with an advanced disease are often confronted with important but complex end-of-life decisions that affect the patient’s manner of dying. The funding sources had no role in the conception and design of the study, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data, or in the writing of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. KC and JC are Postdoctoral Fellows of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO). This study is supported by a grant from the Flemish government agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (Agentschap voor innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie) (SBO IWT nr. Data can be requested from the Flemish Agency ( after requesting permission from the Privacy Commission ( This study is part of the Flanders Study to Improve End-of-Life Care and Evaluation Tools (FLIECE) project, a collaboration between Ghent University, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), and VU University Medical Centre Amsterdam (the Netherlands). These restrictions prohibit the research group from sharing the collected data with others to prevent study participants from being identified. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: Individual data cannot be made fully available on the internet due to data protection and privacy restrictions that were made under contract with the Flemish Agency for care and health, who collected the data. Received: MaAccepted: JPublished: June 23, 2016Ĭopyright: © 2016 Robijn et al. PLoS ONE 11(6):Įditor: Chiara Lazzeri, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria Careggi, ITALY Citation: Robijn L, Cohen J, Rietjens J, Deliens L, Chambaere K (2016) Trends in Continuous Deep Sedation until Death between 20: A Repeated Nationwide Survey.

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