{"title":"Pharmacotherapy in palliative medicine-a decade of evidence: bibliometric review.","authors":"Júlia Raso, Fabiana Rossi Varallo","doi":"10.1136/spcare-2025-005709","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Pharmacotherapy has a strategic role in palliative care (PC). Medications are prescribed in this context for various reasons, leading to polypharmacy, associated with several negative outcomes. Despite its clinical relevance, the scientific literature about pharmacological interventions in PC remains scarce and fragmented. This review aimed to explore and map the pharmacological interventions in PC.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>A bibliometric review was conducted using combined data from Scopus and Web of Science. Inclusion criteria covered original articles and reviews, published between 2014 and 2024, that had terms related to PC present in the title and terms related to the use of medications present in the title, abstract or keywords. RStudio and VOSviewer were used to analyse data, focusing on publication trends, authorship, keywords and thematic evolution.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>A total of 2245 publications were included, mainly original articles (80%), although only 10% were clinical trials. Highest annual production was found in 2024, concentrating mainly in high-income countries. The term \"symptom management\" appears as a central term in keyword analysis; it also appears, along with \"deprescribing\" and \"polypharmacy\", in trending topics evolution, growing in 2019. Data indicate that pharmacotherapy is not yet a consolidated theme itself, being addressed mainly in more general references.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Fragmentation hinders the advancement of key issues such as the identification and management of potentially inappropriate medications, therapeutic rationalisation at the end of life and the pharmacoeconomic impact of these prescriptions and interventions. The field of palliative pharmacotherapy should be considered as a possibility for future literature development.</p>","PeriodicalId":9136,"journal":{"name":"BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care","volume":" ","pages":"1081-1091"},"PeriodicalIF":2.5000,"publicationDate":"2026-08-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care","FirstCategoryId":"3","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1136/spcare-2025-005709","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"HEALTH CARE SCIENCES & SERVICES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: Pharmacotherapy has a strategic role in palliative care (PC). Medications are prescribed in this context for various reasons, leading to polypharmacy, associated with several negative outcomes. Despite its clinical relevance, the scientific literature about pharmacological interventions in PC remains scarce and fragmented. This review aimed to explore and map the pharmacological interventions in PC.
Methods: A bibliometric review was conducted using combined data from Scopus and Web of Science. Inclusion criteria covered original articles and reviews, published between 2014 and 2024, that had terms related to PC present in the title and terms related to the use of medications present in the title, abstract or keywords. RStudio and VOSviewer were used to analyse data, focusing on publication trends, authorship, keywords and thematic evolution.
Results: A total of 2245 publications were included, mainly original articles (80%), although only 10% were clinical trials. Highest annual production was found in 2024, concentrating mainly in high-income countries. The term "symptom management" appears as a central term in keyword analysis; it also appears, along with "deprescribing" and "polypharmacy", in trending topics evolution, growing in 2019. Data indicate that pharmacotherapy is not yet a consolidated theme itself, being addressed mainly in more general references.
Conclusion: Fragmentation hinders the advancement of key issues such as the identification and management of potentially inappropriate medications, therapeutic rationalisation at the end of life and the pharmacoeconomic impact of these prescriptions and interventions. The field of palliative pharmacotherapy should be considered as a possibility for future literature development.
背景：药物治疗在姑息治疗（PC）中具有战略性作用。在这种情况下，由于各种原因开具药物，导致多种药物，并与几种负面结果相关。尽管其临床相关性，关于PC的药物干预的科学文献仍然稀缺和碎片化。本综述旨在探索和绘制PC的药物干预。方法：结合Scopus和Web of Science的数据进行文献计量学综述。纳入标准涵盖2014年至2024年间发表的原创文章和综述，标题中包含与PC相关的术语，标题、摘要或关键词中包含与药物使用相关的术语。使用RStudio和VOSviewer对数据进行分析，重点关注出版趋势、作者、关键词和主题演变。结果：共纳入文献2245篇，以原创文章为主（80%），临床试验文献仅占10%。2024年的年产量最高，主要集中在高收入国家。在关键词分析中，“症状管理”是一个中心术语；在2019年的趋势话题演变中，它与“处方化”和“多药制”一起出现了增长。数据表明，药物治疗本身还不是一个统一的主题，主要是在更一般的参考文献中解决。结论：碎片化阻碍了关键问题的进展，如潜在不适当药物的识别和管理，生命末期的治疗合理化以及这些处方和干预措施的药物经济学影响。姑息性药物治疗领域应被视为未来文献发展的一个可能。
期刊介绍：
Published quarterly in print and continuously online, BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care aims to connect many disciplines and specialties throughout the world by providing high quality, clinically relevant research, reviews, comment, information and news of international importance.
We hold an inclusive view of supportive and palliative care research and we are able to call on expertise to critique the whole range of methodologies within the subject, including those working in transitional research, clinical trials, epidemiology, behavioural sciences, ethics and health service research. Articles with relevance to clinical practice and clinical service development will be considered for publication.
In an international context, many different categories of clinician and healthcare workers do clinical work associated with palliative medicine, specialist or generalist palliative care, supportive care, psychosocial-oncology and end of life care. We wish to engage many specialties, not only those traditionally associated with supportive and palliative care. We hope to extend the readership to doctors, nurses, other healthcare workers and researchers in medical and surgical specialties, including but not limited to cardiology, gastroenterology, geriatrics, neurology, oncology, paediatrics, primary care, psychiatry, psychology, renal medicine, respiratory medicine.
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