Risk Patients—The Elderly

Several of the individual problems and risks increasing and cumulating the risk for morbidity and mortality in the elderly are presented in this book. Each of them is presented in more detail elsewhere. Special attention should be given to patients with severe diseases, polypharmacy, high-alert medications, several prescribers, several acute hospital admissions, and low compliance. It is important to understand that the problems and risks are interconnected. One problem lead to another in a cascade, where the net benefit to harm relation, might be negative. 

Polypharmacy is often a consequence of the cascade of problems. A literature review found that polypharmacy continues to increase and is a known risk factor for important morbidity and mortality (Hajjar et al. 2007). The reviewers states that many studies have found that various numbers of medications are associated with negative health outcomes, but more research is needed to further delineate the consequences associated with unnecessary drug use in elderly patients. Health care professionals should be aware of the risks and fully evaluate all medications at each patient visit to prevent polypharmacy from occurring . 

Barker KN, Flynn EA, Pepper GA, Bates DW, Mikeal RL (2002) Medication errors observed in 36 health care facilities. Arch Intern Med 162 1897-1903 Bates DW, Boyle DL, Vander Vliet MB, Schneider J, Leape L (1995) Relationship between medication errors and adverse drug events. J Gen Intern Med 10 199-205 Cohen MR (ed) (2006) Medication errors. American Pharmaceutical Association, Washington, DC 

EUNet-PaS (2008) The European Network for Patient Safety, http //www.eunetpas.eu. Cited 30 

Flynn EA and Barker KN (2006) Medication errors research. In Cohen MR (ed) Medication errors. 

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