10 de septiembre de 2011

List Of Medications That Put Elderly Patients At Risk: The PRISCUS List

The authors present the new list, which was developed specifically for Germany in the setting of a joint project entitled PRISCUS (Latin for "old and venerable"), and discuss its potential applications. Most patients take more medications as they grow older and thus run a greater risk of drug interactions and side effects. Medications that might cause side effects more frequently in elderly patients than they do in the overall population are called potentially inappropriate medications (PIM). A number of PIM lists already exist for countries other than Germany; these cannot be applied directly to the German situation because of differences between countries with respect to drug approval, prescribing practices, and treatment guidelines. The experts who created the PRISCUS list for Germany, proceeding on the basis of a literature search and a qualitative analysis of existing PIM lists from other countries, judged 83 medications to be potentially inappropriate for elderly patients. The authors of the article call the PRISCUS list an important aid in medical decision-making. The full list can be seen here (in German).

Se elaboró una lista preliminar de 131 medicamentos, agrupados en 24 subgrupos terapéuticos potencialmente inapropiados en ancianos y adaptados al mercado alemán

Dicha tabla ordena los fármacos por subgrupos terapéuticos, detalla los problemas que potencialmente pueden desencadenar en la población anciana, las alternativas terapéuticas existentes y las precauciones que se deben tomar si se decide su uso.