CONTEXT Inappropriate medication use is a major patient safety concern, especially for the elderly population. Using explicit criteria, prior studies have found that 23.5% and 17.5% of the US community-dwelling elderly population used at least 1 of 20 potentially inappropriate medications in 1987 and 1992, respectively. OBJECTIVES To determine the prevalence of potentially inappropriate medic...

The percentage of the population described as elderly is growing, and a higher prevalence of multiple, chronic disease states must be managed concurrently. Healthcare practitioners must appropriately use medication for multiple diseases and avoid risks often associated with multiple medication use such as adverse effects, drug/drug interactions, drug/disease interactions, and inappropriate dosi...

BACKGROUND With the increasing incidence rate of chronic kidney disease (CKD), inappropriate use of medicine in CKD patients is an important issue, as it may cause adverse effects in patients and progression to chronic renal failure. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to assess the frequency of inappropriate medicine use among CKD patients. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted from...

BACKGROUND The prevalence and risk factors of potentially inappropriate medication use among the elderly patients have been studied in various countries, but because of the difficulty of obtaining data on patient characteristics and medications they have not been studied in Japan. METHODS We conducted a retrospective cross-sectional study in 17 Japanese long-term care (LTC) facilities by coll...

BACKGROUND Inappropriate medication use is a major healthcare issue for the elderly population. This study explored the prevalence of potentially inappropriate prescriptions (PIPs) in long-term care in metropolitan Quebec. METHODS A cross sectional chart review of 2,633 long-term care older patients of the Quebec City area was performed. An explicit criteria list for PIPs was developed based ...

BACKGROUND Inappropriate medication prescription is a common cause of preventable adverse drug events among elderly persons in the primary care setting. OBJECTIVE The aim of this systematic review is to quantify the extent of inappropriate prescription to elderly persons in the primary care setting. METHODS We systematically searched Ovid-Medline and Ovid-EMBASE from 1950 and 1980 respectiv...

BACKGROUND Elderly residents of long-term care facilities are more vulnerable to being prescribed inappropriate medications because of the high incidence of co-medication in this population resulting from the presence of multiple chronic diseases and also age-related changes in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. OBJECTIVE We evaluated the frequency of potentially inappropriate medications...

CONTEXT Criteria for potentially inappropriate medication use among elderly patients have been used in the past decade in large US epidemiological surveys to identify populations at risk and specifically target risk-management strategies. In contrast, in Europe little information is available about potentially inappropriate medication use and is based on small studies with uncertain generalizab...