RT Book, Section
A1 Kane, Robert L.
A1 Ouslander, Joseph G.
A1 Resnick, Barbara
A1 Malone, Michael L.
SR Print(0)
ID 1149536958
T1 Drug Therapy
T2 Essentials of Clinical Geriatrics, 8e
YR 2017
FD 2017
PB McGraw-Hill Education
PP New York, NY
SN 9781259860515
LK accessmedicine.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1149536958
RD 2024/04/18
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.