García ZT, López GJA, Roldán DI, Almeida AJ, Villalobos JA, dHyver DC

Language: Spanish
References: 19
Page: 188-197
PDF size: 76.92 Kb.

ABSTRACT

Background: Adverse drug events cause up to 17 to 28% of the hospital admissions in elderly. Knowing these effects let us choose drugs in a better way and avoid undesirable effects.
Objectives: To determine the frequency of inadequate prescriptions in community-dwelling elderly individuals, and the influence of these prescriptions as a cause of hospital admission. Also, we propose a new categorization of inappropriate medications in elderly patients.
Design: Descriptive and transversal study.
Material and methods: We analyzed the prescriptions in patients older than 60 years hospitalized in August 2004. We identified the inappropriate medications according to the Beers criteria and to the prescriptions, included or not in this classification, considered as inadequate for the possible effects or for the adverse interactions.
Results: A total of 60 patients were included. The mean age was of 79.5 ± 7.9 years (61 to 95 years). A 11.7% (n = 7) of the hospital admissions were attributed to undesirable pharmacological effects. The inappropriate prescriptions of the Beers list were observed in 5% (n = 3) of the population. Applying our inappropriate medication criteria, this percentage arose 35%.
Conclusions: The inadequate prescription in elderly has important effects. We propose a classification of inappropriate medication in the older adults with other sections which were not considered in previous categorizations.

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