TY - CHAP M1 - Book, Section TI - Drug Therapy A1 - Kane, Robert L. A1 - Ouslander, Joseph G. A1 - Resnick, Barbara A1 - Malone, Michael L. PY - 2017 T2 - Essentials of Clinical Geriatrics, 8e AB - Many geriatric patients are “walking chemistry sets” because they are prescribed multiple drugs in complex dosage schedules. Polypharmacy is common in older people because of the presence of multiple chronic medical conditions, the proven efficacy of an increasing number of drugs for these conditions, and practice guidelines that recommend their use. Polypharmacy has been defined variably in the literature with the threshold varying between 5 and 10 routine medications. This may be the result of older people seeing multiple prescribing clinicians who do not communicate with each other and a lack of a comprehensive medication list either electronically or in hard copy. SN - PB - McGraw-Hill Education CY - New York, NY Y2 - 2024/03/29 UR - accessmedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1149536958 ER -