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Updated: May 11, 2026

Assessment of Dependence in Activities of Daily Living Among Older Patients in an Acute Care Unit
Published on: September 30, 2020
[Inappropriate prescribing in older adults with chronic-degenerative disease]
María Aideé Luna-Medina1, María Luisa Peralta-Pedrero, Victoria Pineda-Aquino
1Unidad de Medicina Familiar 20, Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, Distrito Federal, México. luisa.peraltap@gmail.com.
Background:
potentially inappropriate prescribing (IP) includes the use of drugs that represent greater risk than benefit to the patient, the STOPP-START instrument, allows its detection, the aim was to evaluate its utility.
Methods:
a descriptive cross-sectional study was performed. Randomly selecting records of older adults with at least one chronic degenerative disease, as last query had more than two months and have completed their monthly meeting at least four citations in the last 6 months were analyzed.
Results:
the files from 285 patients were reviewed, females were 60 %, and the mean age was 74 ± 6 years. A total of 1749 prescriptions included 126 different drugs. The prevalence of inappropriate prescribing was 55 % (95 % CI = 49-61) and 87 % polypharmacy (95 % CI = 83-91). The cardiovascular, endocrine and skeletal muscle system diseases had the highest number of prescriptions and inappropriate prescribing. It was detected the omission of one or more drugs listed in 72 % of 75 % specific clinical circumstances.
Conclusions:
the STOPP-START instrument is useful for detecting inappropriate prescribing. Also, the omission of indicated preventive treatments required for older adults with chronic degenerative diseases.
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