Medications for Older Persons

Medications for Older Persons: Recommendations, Harms, Evidence provides a comprehensive resource detailing the benefits of medications for older individuals. It also addresses the potential harms associated with the prescription of potentially inappropriate medications or omissions in prescribing and examines how many adverse events, rehospitalizations, and deaths can be attributed to these medications. The book opens with a summary of medications that most benefit older patients, followed by the impact of older persons’ alcohol consumption, self-medication, and medication list accuracy and how these factors correlate to health outcomes.

The remainder of the book is devoted to the assessment of medication groups focusing on Numbers Needed to Treat, Numbers Needed to Harm, and characteristics and numbers of adverse events. Medication groups covered include cardiovascular, central nervous system, renal, gastrointestinal, musculoskeletal, respiratory, endocrine, pain, and fall prevention.

• Conveys the benefit and harm profiles of medications for older persons
• Outlines which randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of medication effects have the lowest risk of bias and highest GRADE quality
• Discusses which randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) have the longest and most complete follow up and accounts for the key risk factors and confounders