ReviewCureus2025
Ethical Dilemmas in Pain Management for Frail and End-of-Life Elderly Patients: Balancing Relief, Autonomy, and Clinical Uncertainty.
Review in Cureus, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The management of pain in frail and end-of-life elderly patients represents a significant ethical and clinical challenge in modern healthcare. Demographic transitions toward an aging population and the rising prevalence of frailty and multimorbidity have amplified the complexity of providing safe and compassionate analgesia. Altered pharmacokinetics, polypharmacy, and cognitive impairment often make pain assessment and treatment uncertain, while communication barriers contribute to both underrecognition and undertreatment. Ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice frequently intersect in ways that generate tension, particularly when considering opioid prescribing, palliative sedation, or the interpretation of advance directives. Clinicians must navigate these dilemmas within diverse legal and cultural frameworks, where restrictive policies and societal attitudes toward suffering and death strongly influence practice. Interdisciplinary collaboration, involving palliative care teams, geriatricians, nurses, ethicists, and spiritual care providers, enhances shared decision-making and supports patient-centered care, though significant training gaps remain. Recent innovations, including validated observational pain assessment tools, digital monitoring platforms, and artificial intelligence-assisted evaluation, hold promise for improving accuracy and responsiveness in pain management yet raise new ethical concerns regarding depersonalization and equitable access. Addressing these challenges requires clear ethical guidance, supportive policies, and continued research that integrates clinical, legal, and cultural perspectives. This review emphasizes the need for approaches that are compassionate, individualized, and ethically rigorous, ensuring that frail and terminally ill elderly patients receive care that upholds dignity, relieves suffering, and reflects their values at the end of life.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.