A significant proportion (21%) of elderly Australian veterans received potentially inappropriate medications, highlighting the need for targeted quality prescribing strategies.
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Substantial PIM exposure in veterans warrants vigilance; leaves open whether targeted interventions improve prescribing quality.
This study examined the extent of potentially inappropriate medicine, as defined by explicit criteria, dispensed to Australian veterans using the Repatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme Pharmacy Claims database. Twenty-one per cent of the 192,363 veterans aged 70 years, with an eligible gold card, were dispensed at least one potentially inappropriate medicine in the first 6 months of 2005. Long-acting benzodiazepines, amitriptyline, amiodarone, oxybutynin and doxepin were the medicines most commonly implicated. Strategies to support quality prescribing of medicines to the elderly must include a focus on these medicines.
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Roughead et al. (2007) studied this question.
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