Nebulized Morphine for Relief of Dyspnea Due to Chronic Lung Disease

Abstract

Spanish

French

OBJECTIVE:

To evaluate the efficacy and safety of nebulized morphine for the management of dyspnea in chronic pulmonary diseases.

DATA SOURCES:

MEDLINE (1966–May 2004), EMBASE (1980–May 2004), and International Pharmaceutical Abstracts (1970–May 2004) searches were performed. Key search terms included morphine, dyspnea, and inhalation.

DATA SYNTHESIS:

Nine studies have evaluated the efficacy of nebulized morphine in relieving dyspnea. Three trials had positive resuts, but the rest failed to show improvement after treatment with doses ranging from 1 to 40 mg nebulized morphine. The small number of subjects, variety of disease states, and different outcome measures limit interpretation of the studies.

CONCLUSIONS:

Results from several small studies do not support the use of nebulized morphine for treatment of dyspnea; however, several positive case reports have been published.

Keywords

dyspnea morphine nebulization

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