Dear Visitor,

If medication-related problems were ranked among "causes of death", it would be the fifth leading cause of death in the United States.

Toxic effects of medications and other drug-related problems can have profound medical and safety consequences for older adults. 30% of hospital admissions in elderly patients may be linked either to drug-related problems or drug toxic effects. Prescription drugs and interactions can be the root cause of reversible problems like constipation, agitation, depression, confusion, and falls.

Polypharmacy, the use of multiple prescriptions drugs, is most common among people over age 65 - about one-fifth take at least 10 different medications a week. Because the body absorbs, metabolizes, and rids itself of drugs more slowly with age, a dose considered safe for a middle-age woman can be toxic to her parent.
Especially among older people, the use of multiple drugs is an entrenched, escalating, and mostly unexamined problem in modern health care. Although medications can ease many conditions, multiple-drug use often exacerbates existing ailments and causes troubling side effects. Physicians may interpret such symptoms as a sign of worsening disease to be treated with yet more drugs.

Significant predictors for receiving an inappropriate medication are advancing age, the number of prescribed medications, and the number of physicians prescribing the medications. In short, as your parent takes more medications prescribed by several physicians, the risk of drug related problems increases.
Read more about drugs as bad medicine in "Is Your Parent Overmedicated" from the December, 2008, issue of Prevention magazine.

CLICK TO READ ABOUT “Prescription Drugs Can Be Bad Medicine” and to learn tips that can help protect your parent from drug related hospitalizations and other problems.

Sincerely,
Marcia Johnson