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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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Prescribing safely in elderly psychiatric wards
— survey of possible drug interactions | | Author(s) | Akshya Vasudev, Richard Harrison |
| Journal title | Psychiatric Bulletin, vol 32, no 11, November 2008 |
| Pages | pp 417-418 |
| Source | http://pb.rcpsych.org |
| Keywords | Drugs ; Psychogeriatric units ; Cross sectional surveys. |
| Annotation | A cross-sectional survey of patient drug prescriptions on two elderly psychiatric wards was carried out to estimate the potential of drug-drug interactions. Two standardised databases, British National Formulary (BNF; British Medical Association & Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, 2007) and UptoDate (www.uptodate.com), were employed. Results showed that a majority (96%) of drug prescriptions in our study could potentially cause drug-drug interactions. Most patients were on multiple drugs (on average eight drugs per patient). There was poor concordance between the two databases: BNF picked up fewer cases of potential drug-drug interactions than UptoDate (43 v.152 instances) and they also estimated the potential for hazardousness differently. Polypharmacy is common in elderly psychiatric patients and this increases the possibility of a drug-drug interaction. Estimating the risk of interactions depends on a sound knowledge in therapeutics and/or referring to a standardised source of information. The results of this study question the concordance of two well-referenced databases. (KJ/RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-091209214 A |
| Classmark | LLD: LDM: 3KB |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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