Deprescribing in Palliative Care

Deprescribing is the systematic process of medication discontinuation, where therapy no longer aligns with an individual’s goals of care, or where the risks outweigh the benefits. In this chapter, we describe an iterative, prognosis-informed approach to deprescribing and discuss the benefits and barriers to implementation. We use malignant and non-malignant conditions as examples and present vignettes to illustrate how deprescribing can be a component of palliative care for people in their last short years, months, or days.