Drug Safety in Geriatric Patients: Current Status and Proposed Way Forward

We present some proposals to overcome the barriers preventing the enrollment of frail elderly patients in clinical trials, and strategies for monitoring their therapy to minimize the risk of adverse reactions. Automated a lerts for drug and drug–disease interactions could help appropriate prescribing but should flag only clinically relevant interactions. Pharmaceutical forms should be designed to allow easy dose adjustment and, together with packaging and labeling, should account for the physical and cognitive limi tations of frail elderly patients. Aggregate pharmacovigilance reports should summarize the safety profile in the elderly, but rather than presenting the results by age they should focus on patients’ frailty, perhaps using the number of comorbidities as a proxy when information on frailty is not a vailable.
Source: Drug Safety - Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research