Instrumentos de avaliação da dispneia e tosse em cuidados paliativos: revisão sistemática da literatura

The assessment symptoms instruments’ standardisation in palliative care renders the communication easier and promotes better health care is commonly agreed. In an attempt to add to that standardisation in Portugal, we intended to identify the instruments in palliative care research the most frequently used over the period from February 2000 to February 2014, within the scope of the study of dyspnoea and cough, and verify if those instruments are validated for the Portuguese population. Method: Systematic review of the literature done in 2014, using the electronic databases Pubmed and EBSCO. Results: Selected 31 papers on dyspnoea. 8 different instruments identified (3 unidimen-sional, 2 multidimensional and 3 on quality of life).Selected 4 papers on cough. 3 different instruments identified (2 multidimensional and 1 on quality of life).Conclusion: As to dyspnoea, the majority of the studies used unidimensional assessment instruments, namely the Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale (ESAS) and the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS).The whole amount of literature pieces on the cough did not unequivocally allow us to draw the same conclusions. As for the validation of the identified instruments for Portugal, there is room for improvement.