‘Are all these medicines necessary? A case for deprescribing in the elderly.
One of the goals of clinical therapy is to improve patient quality of life, however in some cases more harm is done than good. This is often the case of overtreatment and "too much medicine". overtreatment and polypharmacy "too much medicine " in the elderly with multiple chronic diseases have been shown to contribute greatly to serious negative effects such as adverse drug effects, falls, increased cost, frequent emergency department visits, hospital admission and on very severe cases, death. Older patients with co-morbidities are often loaded with too much medicine which is driven by strict adherence and reliance on clinical therapy guidelines most times. Most patients older than 70 years old with multiple chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes take upto six or more medicine where some of them are not relevant or are inappropriate. Take for instance, a study conducted in a rural tertiary hospital in Nigeria by Dr.Fadare and colleagues shows...