Drug safety, polypharmacy, and deprescribing are important issues in post-acute and
long-term care medicine and therefore also of great interest to JAMDA's editors and readers. This issue of JAMDA features a number of articles that advance the discussion of these topics. Two articles
document and describe prescribing behavior—one on the challenges clinicians face determining
whether and, if so, when antipsychotics are appropriate to prescribe
1
; the other on the subjective nature of opioid prescribing decisions.
2
Several other articles shed new light on the safety and adverse effects of medications.
3
,
4
,
5
Also included are an article on discontinuation of antipsychotic medications for
persons with dementia
6
and a review of randomized controlled trials on deprescribing.
7
In this editorial, we address the broader context of pharmaceuticals in geriatric
medicine and the challenges inherent in simplifying and reducing medication lists
in older patients with multiple chronic conditions.To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Footnotes
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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© 2018 AMDA - The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine.
