Palliative care for the oldest old: recommendations from the first Italian Consensus Conference

In all care settings (hospital, health and social services facilities, and intermediate and home care), recognizingthe need for palliative care for the oldest old – that is, when care and assistance for prevention, cure or rehabilitationpurposes should aim at maximizing comfort and control of disturbing symptoms to safeguard the qualityof life – is a challenging task.The early identification, among the oldest old, of those who could benefit from palliative interventions hasproved effective in improving their quality of life and that of their families, as well as in reducing costs and improvingthe appropriateness of interventions.To answer this need, the non-profit APRIRE Association (Assistenza PRimaria In REte) – Health at km 0 – haspromoted the Consensus Conference “Palliative care for the oldest old at home, in nursing homes and inhospices”. A Consensus Conference is one of the tools that allow achievement of an inter-party agreementon especially controversial and complex issues through a formal process; it favors the choice of directions forclinical practice that are as uniform as possible, and determines the means to provide patients with the bestquality of care in relation to the available resources.This consensus document was discussed and approved on October 24, 2018 in Rome by a panel of designatedmembers of a number of scientific societies (Extrahospital Geriatric Association, Italian Association ofFamily and Community Nurses, Italian Association of Psychogeriatrics, Italian Palliative Care Society, ItalianSociety of Gerontology and Geriatrics, Italian College of General Practitioners and Primary Care, Italian Societyof Geriatrics Hospital and Territory), the Department of Biotechnology and Life Sciences, Center for ClinicalEthics, University of Insubria, Varese, the National Federation of Physicians, Surgeons and Dentists, the NationalFederation of Nursing Professions, the National Council of the Order of Psychologists and the ItalianNational Institute of Health.