Leading Cause of Adverse Medication Events | Senior Care Services

by Reed on August 27, 2012

Q.???? I am 75 years old and just got out of the hospital after suffering some unexpected bleeding. The doctors said it was caused by my blood-thinning medication, which they say needs to be monitored more frequently now because of my age. I?m a little more worried about my health, but I told my two sons who live 400 miles away that I feel too good to go to a care facility. Any recommendations?

Your situation is not unusual. There are nearly 100,000 emergency hospitalizations each year for adverse drug events that involve U.S. senior citizens, according to a?Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study?published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Of the thousands of medications available to patients, a small group of blood thinners and diabetes medications caused two-thirds of the emergency hospitalizations, the report said.

The study used data collected from a nationally representative sample of 58 hospitals participating in CDC?s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-Cooperative Adverse Drug Event Surveillance project.

Almost half (48.1 percent) of these hospitalizations occur among the elderly aged 80 years or older, and two-thirds (65.7 percent) of the hospitalizations were due to overdoses, or to situations in which patients may have taken the prescribed amount of medication but the drug had more than the intended effect on the patient?s body. Four medications, used alone or together, accounted for two-thirds of the emergency hospitalizations:

• 33 percent, or 33,171 emergency hospitalizations, involved warfarin, a medication used to prevent blood clots.
• 14 percent involved insulins. Insulin injections are used to control blood sugar in people who have diabetes.
• 13 percent involved antiplatelet drugs, such as aspirin or clopidogrel, which prevent platelets, or pieces of blood cells from clumping together to start a clot.
• 11 percent involved diabetes medications that are taken by mouth, called oral hypoglycemic agents.

You and your family could feel more at ease if someone regularly checks on you. A?Home Instead CAREGiver^SM?can provide non-medical services including medication reminders and transportation to doctors? appointments to help give you peace of mind. CAREGivers are screened, trained, bonded and insured.

Source: http://eldercarepgh.com/leading-cause-of-adverse-medication-events/

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