Pharmaceutical agents are a valuable resource to assist in the care of older persons.
Their use in post-acute and long-term care settings is particularly notable—for example,
the proportion of nursing home residents taking 9 or more medications increased from
18% in the mid-1990s to 40% less than 15 years later.
1
,2
Average drug counts are similarly high around the world, although there is considerable
variation in use between settings and countries.
3
,4
High medication use occurs despite the fact that persons with advanced age and multimorbidity
are particularly susceptible to drug adverse effects due to physiological changes
such as declines in hepatic and renal clearance. Further, the probability of deleterious
drug interactions rises exponentially as the number of medications increases.
5
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: November 27, 2020
Footnotes
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 AMDA - The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine.
