Optimaliseren geneesmiddelengebruik door ouderen

Abstract

Kwint H-F, Faber A, Gussekloo J, Bouvy ML. Optimizing medication use for elderly patients. Huisarts Wet 2015;58(3):134-8. In conclusion, the studies presented in the thesis show the importance of the different steps of the medication review process when prescribing for elderly patients and the outcomes achieved. Studies of older users of multidose drug dispensing systems provide insight into the quality of medication use in these individuals. Further research is needed, for example, to determine which older patients will benefit the most from medication review or use of multidose drug dispensing systems. The thesis Improving appropriate medication use for older people in primary care investigated how the medication use of elderly patients on polypharmacy in primary care can be optimized, with emphasis on the effects of medication review and multidose dispensing systems. In this article, we present a series of studies from this thesis. We describe the effect of medication review on drug-related problems, disease-specific outcomes, and health-related quality of life. Thereafter we focus on the different steps of the medication review process, such as the medication history and the possible role of explicit STOPP-START criteria in the identification of drug-related problems. We investigated the extent of inappropriate prescribing to older patients receiving their drugs via multidose drug dispensers and compared the self-reported medication adherence and knowledge of these patients with those of patients receiving manually dispensed drugs.