Deprescribing of Problematic Polypharmacy
A special issue of Pharmacy (ISSN 2226-4787).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 August 2019) | Viewed by 32302
Special Issue Editor
Interests: deprescribing in frail older people; patient involvement in shared-decision making; implementing of prescribing guidelines through behaviour change; use of anticoagulation to reduce strokes in atrial fibrillation
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The population of most countries in getting older and patients now commonly live with multimorbidity, which in turn is treated with increasing amounts of repeat prescriptions (polypharmacy). In addition, the increase in polypharmacy for older people is also fueled by the perceived need of prescribers to follow national guidance which encourage prescribing. Whilst prescribing may have benefits that outweigh risks, as patients become older and frailer it may be that some prescribing is no longer appropriate. As a consequence, health commissioners, practitioners and researchers are encouraging a focus on deprescribing of medicines that are no longer suitable, unlikely to provide benefit or are causing, or could cause, more harm than benefit.
However there remain many unanswered questions about deprescribing that are barriers to implementing change in practice. For example, how harmful is polypharmacy in frail older people? Which medicines are safe to deprescribe and for which medical conditions? How should individual medicines be reduced and stopped? What are the medico-legal considerations of deprescribing and how can the risks of litigation be minimised? How do patients feel about having their long-term medicines stopped and how would they like to be involved in decisions to reduce or stop their medicines? And what terminology should we be using in patient consultations to describe “deprescribing”?
The scope of this Special Issue is to share learning on these questions and the broader subject of deprescribing, especially for, but not restricted to, the frail elderly population. I encourage you to present your research, reviews and quality improvement work on the topic of deprescribing.
Dr. Duncan Petty
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- Deprescribing
- Polypharmacy
- Medication review
- Patient participation
- Frailty
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