SynthesisArchives of disease in childhood. Fetal and neonatal edition2025
Outcomes used to measure the clinical application of neonatal palliative and/or end-of-life care in neonatal settings: a systematic review.
Synthesis in Archives of disease in childhood. Fetal and neonatal edition, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectivesStandardised reporting of outcomes in neonatal palliative and/or end-of-life care would facilitate comparison of practice and lead to more informed decisions about practice. We systematically reviewed evidence evaluating outcomes currently used to characterise the clinical provision of palliative and/or end-of-life care in neonatal settings.
methodsA systematic review following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines was undertaken using Ovid Medline, Ovid Embase, OVID PsycINFO, OVID MIDIRIS and EBSCOhost CINAHL. No date or language restrictions were used. Studies were included if they measured or reported outcomes related to the clinical practice of neonatal palliative care in a neonatal unit.
resultsOf 7998 records identified through database searching, 20 articles were included. Identified studies were retrospective chart reviews. No studies used standardised outcomes and all used proxy outcome measures. Results were organised according to the WHO domains of paediatric palliative care. All studies (n=20) reported documentation of physical symptoms and functional status (physical domain); six documented parental emotional and support needs (psychological domain); four reported sibling support and wider family presence (social and cultural domain), and three reported support from spiritual services (spiritual domain).
conclusionDespite neonatal death accounting for the largest category of child death under 5 years of age, there are no standardised outcomes from which to characterise or develop clinical practice. Developing a core outcome set for neonatal palliative and end-of-life care would ensure that services can be compared using reliably collected and collated data and help advance care in this area.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.