A reader asks: In the past year or two, my elderly mother has received a lot of new prescriptions. How can I make sure the drugs will not mix badly and make her sick? In this Health Alert Johns Hopkins answers this question and addresses the larger issue of drug safety and the elderly.
If you are age 65 or older, drug safety takes on special importance. Older adults are more likely to experience side effects from prescription drugs than young people, in part because of physiological changes in the body that commonly accompany aging.
Also, as people age, they tend to develop chronic illnesses such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis, and osteoporosis. As a result, it is quite common for the elderly to be on multiple drugs -- a practice referred to as polypharmacy. The average older adult takes between three and five prescription drugs, and many older adults take over-the-counter drugs and supplements as well.
In answer to our reader’s question: Have your mother bag up all her drugs and supplements and bring them to medical appointments for a quick review. Another alternative is to bring a detailed list of drugs and doses. Ask the doctor if all the prescriptions are necessary, whether the doses are at the lowest effective level, and if anything can be done to reduce the number of pills she has to take.
Using combination products that contain fixed doses of drugs often used together is one option to reduce the number of pills taken each day. Or sometimes it is possible to switch to a sustained or extended-release version of a drug that you can take once per day rather than twice or three times. These alternative regimens may not be covered under your mother's insurance, so check before changing prescriptions.
