Jan 21, 2021
On the one hand, every year we are fortunate to have new medications that help older adults and people living with serious illness. New treatments for lung cancer with remarkable survival outcomes come to mind, for example.
On the other hand, the tremendous growth in medications has led to an explosion of prescribing, polypharmacy, with attendant side effects and harms.
In this week's podcast, we talk with Nagham Ailabouni, a pharmacist and researcher joining us from Australia (song choice: Down Under!) about her review of major articles on medication safety and quality for older adults. Dr. Ailabouni summarized the top four hardest hitting in a recent publication in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, or JAGS. The four articles are:
Dr. Ailabouni’s pet peeve medication she sees prescribed to hospice patients? High dose metformin. Listen to the podcast for more!
-@AlexSmithMD