Senior customer showing prescription to female doctor. Cashier is assisting elderly woman at checkout counter. They are standing at pharmacy.
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Adverse drug events are more common in older people with comorbidities, a new study finds. Factors that are independently linked with adverse drug events are being female, taking more drugs daily, having fallen within one year of study data collection, and having poor medication compliance.
Nurses collected data from 328 older adults in the report, which was published on March 4 in BMC Geriatrics. All of the participants were from the First Hospital of China Medical University, and ranged from 61 to 90 years old. Of participants, 62.3% had “possible-probable-certain” adverse drug events and 47.4% reported two or more self-reported adverse drug events at the same time.
All of the factors that were linked to having an adverse drug event were ones that have been studied before and aligned with the current study’s findings, the authors noted. (For example, 28% of women who were hospitalized experienced one or more adverse drug reactions compared to 21% of men, according to a July 2024 report in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.)
The team noted in their report that registered nurses and other healthcare professionals can play a vital role in driving conversations with patients and their families to clarify medication lists and assess potential adverse events. When the nurses who interact with and monitor patients share information with their colleagues, that could further promote medication safety, the team wrote.
“These findings may provide informative interventions for the medication management in elderly patients living with multimorbidity,” the authors wrote.Adverse drug events can lead to needless emergency department visits, hospitalizations and added costs, the authors pointed out. They can also lead to problematic prescribing cascades if people are given a medication to help them deal with an adverse drug reaction caused by a previously taken prescription medication, a September 2024 report found.