Health and Disability

Weaning older patients off inappropriate medications which may harm them more than help them should be a priority for all prescribing clinicians, say the authors of two clinical focus articles published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Deprescribing - the process of reducing or stopping drugs, "with the goal of minimising polypharmacy and improving outcomes" - has the potential to relieve unnecessary medication- related adverse events and disability in vulnerable older people, the authors wrote.

Associate Professor Ian Scott, from the Department of Internal Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology at Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, and colleagues wrote that one in five prescriptions issued to older adults were "inappropriate".

"One in four community-living older people are hospitalised for medication-related problems over a 5-year period and 15% of older patients attending general practice report an adverse drug event (ADE) over the previous 6 months", the authors wrote.