Tag Archives: medication

New Study Suggests Cautions About Antipsychotic Medications for Hospitalized Older Adults

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Journal of the American Geriatrics Society Research Summary

Delirium (sudden confusion or a rapid change in mental state) remains a serious challenge for our health care system. Delirium affects 15 to 26 percent of hospitalized older adults and can be particularly problematic because those experiencing the condition may interfere with medical care or directly harm themselves or others. Besides behavioral therapy and physical restraints, antipsychotic medicines are among the few therapeutic options healthcare providers can use to ease delirium and protect patients and caregivers—but antipsychotics also come with risks of their own.

To learn more about the effect of antipsychotic medicines on older hospitalized patients, a research team created a study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. This study included information from hospitalized patients at a large academic medical center in Boston.

The researchers looked specifically at death or non-fatal cardiopulmonary arrest (heart attack) during hospitalization.

The researchers learned that adults taking “first-generation” or “typical” antipsychotic medications (medicines first developed around the 1950s) were significantly more likely to experience death or cardiopulmonary arrest, compared to people who did not take those drugs. Taking “atypical” or “second-generation” antipsychotics (so named because they were developed later) raised the risk for death or cardiopulmonary arrest only for people aged 65 or older.

In the past, other studies have suggested that typical antipsychotic medications could cause sudden death, and that atypical antipsychotics could raise peoples’ risks for falls, pneumonia and death. What’s more, another large study also suggested that both types of antipsychotic medicines posed a risk for fatal heart attacks.

Despite these known risks, atypical antipsychotics are often prescribed for people in the hospital. One recent study of patients at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston found that antipsychotics were prescribed for nine percent of all adults who were hospitalized for non-psychiatric causes.  Another large recent study found that using antipsychotics to prevent or treat delirium did not lower the risk for death, did not lessen the severity of delirium or shorten its duration, and did not shorten the time people spent in the intensive care unit (ICU) or their hospital length of stay.

“Delirium is common in older hospitalized patients and difficult to treat, but antipsychotic medications should be used with caution regardless of age,” said the authors.

This summary is from “Antipsychotics and the Risk of Mortality or Cardiopulmonary Arrest in Hospitalized Adults.” It appears online ahead of print in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The study authors are Matthew Basciotta, MD; Wenxiao Zhou, MS; Long Ngo, PhD; Michael Donnino, MD; Edward R. Marcantonio, MD, MSc; and Shoshana J. Herzig, MD, MPH.

 

Geriatricians, Internists, and Cardiologists Surveyed About Deprescribing

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Journal of the American Geriatrics Society Research Summary

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As you grow older, you’re more likely to develop health conditions that require taking multiple medications—some of which you may take for a long time. Many older people also take over-the-counter (or “OTC”) medications, vitamins, or supplements as part of routine care. As a result, older adults have a higher risk of overmedication, also known as “polypharmacy”—the medical term for taking four or more medications at the same time. Polypharmacy can increase your chances of unwanted reactions (also called “adverse drug reactions”) due to medications taken on their own or together.

To address this increasingly common problem, healthcare providers are focusing on how to reduce the number of medicines older adults are using through a practice called “deprescribing,” which is when health professionals work with patients to decide to stop the use of one or more medications for which the benefits no longer outweigh the potential harms.

Getting both patients and health professionals on board with deprescribing can be key to its success, however. In order to learn more about physicians’ attitudes and approaches to deprescribing medications for older adults, a team of researchers designed a survey. They published their investigation in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Continue reading →

For Older Women, Taking High Blood Pressure Medication May Not Raise Risk for Falls

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Journal of the American Geriatrics Society Research Summary

High blood pressure (also known as hypertension) is the medical term for when the force of blood against your blood vessel walls is too high. We know that using medication to lower high blood pressure can prevent heart attacks and strokes. But healthcare professionals often worry that prescriptions for lowering high blood pressure can sometimes lower it too much. This can put you at risk for becoming dizzy and falling.

Falls are a serious problem in older adults. In 2014, falls caused 2.8 million emergency room visits, 800,000 hospitalizations, and 27,000 deaths, and cost Medicare an estimated $31.3 billion.

Although some healthcare experts suspect that taking high blood pressure medication over time is linked to falls and fractures, very little research supports that belief. In fact, at least two major studies examining blood pressure reduction did not find an increased risk for falls among people taking medication to reduce high blood pressure. Other studies have not shown an increase in fracture risk for people taking medication for high blood pressure—in fact, some studies suggest that high blood pressure medicines may actually reduce the risk for fractures.

Researchers decided to learn more about the links between falls, high blood pressure, and high blood pressure medication in older women. They published their study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Continue reading →

Avoiding Dangerous Side Effects of Medications in Nursing Homes

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Journal of the American Geriatrics Society Research Summary

Experts from the University of Iowa recently published a study in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society examining the kind of medication errors and side effects that nursing home residents experience. They also looked at staffing and work systems in nursing homes that could affect medication errors and side effects. This is important because more than 1.4 million older adults lived in nursing home facilities as of 2015. Of these, 85 percent were 65-years-old and older and 41 percent were 85-years-of-age or older. In 2014, there were 15,600 nursing homes in the United States.

Older adults who live in nursing homes are at greater risk for injuries related to the medications we might take as we age (these injuries are also known as “adverse drug events”). There is a greater risk for adverse drug events for this population due to age, frailty, disability, and the multiple chronic illnesses we may be managing at any given time. For these illnesses, nursing home residents usually need several medicines, sometimes including riskier medicines like antipsychotics, antidepressants, and antiepileptics.

Some adverse drug events are due to preventable errors. Others are considered “non-preventable” because they can occur even when the medications are correctly given at normal doses. Continue reading →

Commonly Prescribed Heartburn Drug Linked to Pneumonia in Older Adults

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Journal of the American Geriatrics Society Research Summary

Researchers at the University of Exeter have found a statistical link between pneumonia in older people and a group of medicines commonly used to neutralize stomach acid in people with heartburn or stomach ulcers. Although proton-pump inhibitors (PPIs) are still a valuable group of medicines, research is indicating that PPIs are not as completely safe for older people as previously thought.

PPIs are medicines commonly prescribed to reduce gastric (stomach) acid production and to protect the stomach. Approximately 40 percent of older adults receive PPIs, although according to some experts, up to 85 percent of people who receive PPI prescriptions may not need them.

Researchers say people should not stop using their PPI medication, but should discuss with their prescribing healthcare professional whether the PPIs are still needed. Just stopping PPIs could be dangerous as PPIs may be useful, for example, to prevent stomach bleeds in some people.

Once thought to be relatively harmless, PPIs have more recently been linked to increased rates for certain health concerns like fractures, cardiovascular disease, and some bacterial infections. The association between PPI use and pneumonia was studied because stomach acid helps to prevent infections spreading from the gut in some individuals. Since pneumonia is a major cause of death for older adults, it is important for healthcare providers to understand the links between PPIs and pneumonia.

The Exeter team designed a study to look at statistical links in medical records between long-term PPI use and pneumonia in older adults. Their study was published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Continue reading →