A comparison of artificial saliva and pilocarpine in the management of xerostomia in patients with advanced cancer

This was a crossover study comparing a mucin-based artificial saliva (Saliva Orthana (TM)) and pilocarpine hydrochloride (Salagen (TM)) in the management of xerostomia in patients with advanced cancer. The pilocarpine was found to be more effective than the artificial saliva in terms of mean change in visual analogue scale scores for xerostomia (P = 0.003). Furthermore, more patients reported that it had helped their xerostomia, and more patients wanted to continue with it after the study. However, the pilocarpine was found to be associated with more side-effects than the artificial saliva (P < 0.001). These side-effects were usually reported as being mild. Of the patients who used both treatments, 50% preferred the artificial saliva, and 50% preferred the pilocarpine. The commonest reason for preferring the artificial saliva was the fact that it was a spray, rather than a tablet.