Potentially inappropriate prescribing in a population of frail elderly people

Background Frailty is a clinical syndrome highly predictive of functional decline after a stress or a medical event, such as adverse drug events. Objective To describe the prevalence of potentially inappropriate prescribing in a population of frail elderly patients. Setting Geriatric day hospital for assessment of frailty and prevention of disability, Toulouse, France. Method A cross-sectional study performed from January to April 2014. Two pharmacists retrospectively analyzed the prescriptions of elderly patients who were sent to the day hospital to assess their frailty and to be given a personalized plan of care and prevention. Potentially inappropriate prescribing was defined by combining explicit criteria: Laroche list, screening tool of older people's prescriptions, and screening tool to alert to right treatment with an implicit method (drug utilization review for each medication). Prescriptions' optimizations were then suggested to the geriatricians of the day hospital and classified according to criteria defined by the French Society of Clinical Pharmacy. Main outcome measure Prevalence of potentially inappropriate prescribing. Results Among the 229 patients included, 71.2% had potentially inappropriate prescribing. 76 patients (33.2%) had at least one drug without any valid indication. 51 (22.3%) had at least one drug with an unfavorable benefit-to-risk ratio according to their clinical and biological data, 42 (18.3%) according to the Laroche list and 38 (16.6%) had at least one drug with questionable efficacy. Conclusion Our work shows that the incidence of PIP is high in the frail elderly and that, in most cases, it could be avoided with an adequate and regular reassessment of the prescriptions. In future, prescription optimization will be integrated into the personalized medical care plan to further prevent drug-related disability.