Outpatient Supportive and Palliative Care for Parkinson’s Disease and Related Disorders: A Scoping Review

Parkinson’s disease and related disorders (PDRD) are chronic neurodegenerative diseases which cause significant disability related to a range of motor, non-motor, and neurobehavioral symptoms. The heterogeneous and progressive symptom burden often necessitates substantial time and ongoing support from those who help to coordinate and provide care; this is true both in formal health care settings and of informal caretakers within the patient’s personal life. Significant physical and emotional burden therefore not only directly impacts patients but also extends to their support systems. Palliative and supportive care have well-established benefits in other high symptom burden fields, such as oncology. Though their applications in PDRD are newer and less established, a number of palliative and supportive care interventions for this population have been developed and monitored in recent years. In order to consolidate and appraise the evidence supporting palliative and supportive care for PDRD, we performed a scoping review synthesizing the literature published between 2009 and 2026 that explored how these programs have been implemented and what their effects have been on (a) patient quality of life, (b) motor symptoms, (c) non-motor symptoms, (d) advance care planning, and (e) care partner quality of life and/or burden. We identified 10 relevant studies, which collectively demonstrate benefits in each of the aforementioned domains for patients and care partners participating in the palliative/supportive care intervention, though with some variation in impact possibly related to differences in care delivery model, setting, and study design. We also acknowledge the huge range of mechanisms by which palliative or supportive care principles may be applied to PDRD and briefly discuss additional approaches not captured by our formal review. Overall, this summary aims to inform the development and refinement of evidence-based palliative and supportive care models for individuals with PDRD and their care partners.