Centre for Policy on Ageing



Strategies against polypharmacy and inappropriate medication — are they effective?
Author(s)	F H W Chan, C K W Pei, K C Chiu
Journal title	Australasian Journal on Ageing, vol 20.2, June 2001
Pages	pp 85-88
Keywords	Drugs ; Management [care] ; Efficiency ; Hong Kong.
Annotation	Polypharmacy and inappropriate medication predispose older people to increased risk of complications such as adverse drug reactions and non-compliance, which in turn will cause a higher rate of hospital admission and associated costs. This article reports a case notes study of 210 patients (mean age 80.2) discharged from a Hong Kong hospital from July to September 1997. The mean number of medications on admission was 4.65 per patient, with a mean of 0.5 being inappropriate. The mean number of medications per patient on discharge was 3.56, with inappropriate medication reduced to 0.13 per patient. The most frequent class of inappropriate medication was drugs for the respiratory system both on admission and discharge. The commonest reason for being an inappropriate medication was the use of drug, which had no apparent indication both on admission and discharge. A drug rationalisation programme can effectively reduce the incidence of polypharmacy and inappropriate medication. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-011008222 A
Classmark	LLD: QA: 5HA: 7DR
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.