[Avoidable risks in the drug treatment of very old patients]

Among 196 patients with a mean age of 80 years there were, at the time of hospitalization, 12.2% who had been prescribed wrong or partly even high-risk medication drugs, some of which carried a high risk. Among 694 prescriptions 4.2% were faulty. The faults consisted of failure to take account of impaired renal function, contraindications, accompanying illnesses, and misinterpretation of side-effects. 80% of these prescriptions were for diuretics, psychoactive and antiarrhythmic drugs, digitalis and hypnotics. The number of faulty prescriptions on discharge was 1.4%. In all, the average number of prescribed drugs had decreased from 3.5 on admission to 2.9 on discharge. This retrospective study demonstrates that the manner of prescribing for elderly patients needs to be handled more critically and rationally.