The elderly have a suboptimal relationship with drugs, so much so that over 66% take too many.
For this reason, the Integrated University Hospital (Aoui) of Verona is launching a pilot project to reduce the intake of medicines for 1,500 patients.
The medication review and deprescribing service started with an initial test analyzing the clinical picture and therapeutic regime of approximately 30 patients on polytherapy (at least 5 drugs), both geriatric and internal medicine.
At the moment, in Italy there is no other healthcare facility that has started a structured procedure like this.
The project will present to the Ethics Committee a protocol for an experimental study to reduce polypharmacy in elderly patients hospitalized in Internal Medicine and Geriatrics departments.
The study will be on approximately 1500 patients/year, with these characteristics: age over 65;
taking at least 5 chronic drug therapies;
life expectancy of at least 6 months.
In Italy, approximately 23% of the population is over 65 years of age, of which a good percentage have more than three major pathologies at the same time.
According to the latest report from the National Observatory on the use of medicines, approximately 66.6% of users aged 65 or over are on polypharmacy, while approximately 25% take at least 10 different active ingredients daily.
Several studies indicate that approximately 10% of unplanned hospitalizations in geriatrics are caused by adverse drug reactions.
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