Palliative care status for people with Alzheimer's disease in the Eastern Mediterranean region: a review.

BACKGROUND

Palliative care is a specialised interdisciplinary care which aims to improve the quality of life in patients with terminal illnesses, such as Alzheimer's disease, and their families. The Eastern Mediterranean region (EMR) has the highest age-standardised prevalence of this disease worldwide, indicating an alarming increase in dementia in the region which requires appropriate palliative care planning for these patients.

AIMS: The aim of this review was to determine the status of palliative care in people with Alzheimer's disease in the Eastern Mediterranean Region.

METHODS

Searches in PubMed, Scopus and ISI databases were conducted without language restrictions from 1998 to January 2023. The searched keywords were Palliative care, hospice care, terminal care, end of life care, Alzheimer's disease and Eastern Mediterranean region. After screening and selection, studies that were consistent with the purpose of this research were included. The required information was extracted, summarised and reported. Data management was done by EndNote-vxp8 software.

RESULTS

Approximately, half of Eastern Mediterranean region countries do not have any outpatient or inpatient services for palliative care, home care or hospice. The palliative care status for people with Alzheimer's disease in the region is discussed in four groups: no specific palliative care activity, capacity building for the provision of palliative care, the limited provision of palliative care and the provision of general palliative care. Alzheimer's associations, providing care service packages, designing care programmes and the movements in Alzheimer's-friendly communities have been helpful to some extent in some countries, but most of the services provided to patients include counselling, meaningful interactions/activities, seminars, webinars, training workshops and support groups. There are many challenges in this region in the areas of governance, public awareness, human resources, training and medicine for palliative care, especially for people with Alzheimer's disease.

CONCLUSIONS

In most Eastern Mediterranean Region countries, palliative care has remained in the early stages of development, and there is an urgent need to increase care and support for people with Alzheimer's disease and their caregivers. To overcome the barriers to treating people with Alzheimer's disease, improving care paths and raising public awareness is of great importance.