Adverse Drug Events in the Elderly

Adverse drug events are common in the elderly and often lead to emergency department visits. Geriatricians use a measure known as the Beers criteria to avoid prescribing drugs that have been found either to be ineffective or to pose unnecessarily high risk in patients aged 65 or older. The Beers criteria list consists of 48 medications or classes of medications in two categories: always potentially inappropriate and potentially inappropriate in certain circumstances.

Researchers used three large national databases to estimate the number of ED visits for adverse drug events among patients aged 65 or older and rates of outpatient prescriptions for drugs involved in those events and for Beers criteria drugs.

Drugs on the Beers criteria list caus…