Explicit criteria as clinical tools to minimize inappropriate medication use and its consequences
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Published version
Date
2019-02-13
Authors
Curtin, Denis
Gallagher, Paul F.
O'Mahony, Denis
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
SAGE Journals
Published Version
Abstract
Polypharmacy and prescribing of potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) are the key elements of inappropriate medication use (IMU) in older multimorbid people. IMU is associated with a range of negative healthcare consequences including adverse drug events and unplanned hospitalizations. Furthermore, prescribing guidelines are commonly derived from randomized controlled clinical trials which have specifically excluded older adults with multimorbidity. Consequently, indiscriminate application of single disease pharmacotherapy guidelines to older multimorbid patients can lead to increased risk of drug?drug interactions, drug?disease interactions and poor drug adherence. Both polypharmacy and PIMs are highly prevalent in older people and strategies to improve the quality and safety of prescribing, largely through avoidance of IMU, are needed. In the last 30?years, numerous explicit PIM criteria-based tools have been developed to assist physicians with medication management in clinically complex multimorbid older people. Very few of these PIM criteria sets have been tested as an intervention compared with standard pharmaceutical care in well-designed clinical trials. In this review, we describe the most widely used sets of explicit PIM criteria to address inappropriate polypharmacy with particular focus on STOPP/START criteria and FORTA criteria which have been associated with positive patient-related outcomes when used as interventions in recent randomized controlled trials.
Description
Keywords
Inappropriate prescribing , Explicit criteria , Elderly , Multimorbidity , Polypharmacy , Adverse drug reaction , Adverse drug event
Citation
Curtin, D., Gallagher, P.F. and O’Mahony, D., 2019. Explicit criteria as clinical tools to minimize inappropriate medication use and its consequences. Therapeutic advances in drug safety, 10, (2042098619829431). DOI: 10.1177/2042098619829431