Potentially inappropriate drugs may cause problems for the elderly.(Clinical Rounds)

ORLANDO -- Up to 39% of geriatric patients are taking potentially inappropriate medications, and this trend is associated with increased drug-related problems and health care costs in the United States, according to a new study.

The findings should encourage physicians to be more critical in their prescribing decisions, said Diane M. Spokus, one of the authors of the study, which was presented as a poster at the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America.

The retrospective examination of medication use among 17, 971 managed care patients aged 65 or older found that 6,875 (39%) were using at least one potentially inappropriate medication (PIM), including 13% who were using two or more PIMs.

PIMs were defined by the revised Beers criteria (Arch. Intern. Med. 2003;163:2716-24) as either "medications or medication classes that should generally be avoided in persons 65 years or older because they are either ineffective, or they pose unnecessarily high risk for older persons, and a safer alternative is available."

The finding of a 39% rate of PIM prescriptions is higher than what has been previously reported, "but we attributed that to the fact that we included oral estrogen as a PIM, and that accounted for almost 10%," Ms. Spokus said in an interview.

After ...