Potentially Inappropriate Prescribing in Patients on Admission and Discharge from an Older Peoples’ Unit of an Acute UK Hospital

Abstract

Admission to a specialist HAU was associated with a significant reduction in PIMS. Very few patients discharged with a PIM had a documented follow-up plan. PIM prevalence was lower than published rates found internationally. Similar studies in settings of varying types across the UK are needed.

Clinical Medication Review and Falls in Older People—What Is the Evidence Base?

“…A PIM index is calculated by dividing the total number of PIMs by the total number of medications. A UK study [29] carried out within an acute hospital setting found that the admission PIM prevalence was 26.7% (95% CI 20.5 -32.9; 52 patients, 74 PIMs). The most common PIM categories on admission were central nervous system and psychotropic drugs, drugs adversely affecting patients at risk of falls and drugs acting on the urogenital system.…”

Influence of hospitalization on potentially inappropriate prescribing among elderly patients in a Malaysian community

“…In contrast, Onatade et al reported a significant reduction in PIMs in the Specialist Health and Ageing Unit in the UK using the STOPP criteria [20]. Compared with the number of studies that addressed this issue in western countries, little is known about this in the Asian region.…”

“…However, most of the available published studies used version 1 of the criteria and this may further explain the differences between the results of this study and the results found in other studies. One of the most encountered STOPP categories on admission and discharge was "using drugs that predictably increase the risk of falls in older people", which was also reported as one of the top classes of PIMs used in other studies [3,17,20,21,31], yet the types of drugs may have been different. The prescribing of these kinds of drugs to elderly patients is of concern since it is associated with falls and fracture-related hospitalizations [4].…”

“…Studies that compared the prevalence rate of PIPs pre-and posthospitalization found that the results were incompatible. These studies reported a decrease [19,20], increase [21], or insignificant change [22,23] in PIMs after hospitalization. As far as is known, there is no published study available that has assessed the impact of hospitalization on PIPs among elderly patients in Malaysia.…”

Retrospective Study to Describe and Compare the Application of Select Sections of the STOPP/START and Beers Criteria in Medication Reviews in a Musculoskeletal Specialty Practice

“…The STOPP Criteria contains 65 evidence based indicators for potentially inappropriate prescribing with an explanation for why the medication could be inappropriate in a geriatric patient appearing next to each criteria Dalleur et al, 2012;Gallagher et al, 2007;Onatade, Auyeung, Scutt, Fernando, 2013).…”