THOUSANDS OF older people are being prescribed potentially inappropriate medications, costing the Irish health service millions every year, the findings of a new study suggest.
Researchers looked at 334,000 prescriptions dispensed to over-70s medical-card holders in 2007 and found 27 per cent (more than 91,000 people) were prescribed one potentially inappropriate medication while 10 per cent were prescribed two potentially inappropriate medications.
The total cost of the drugs potentially inappropriately prescribed came to more than €39 million.
Caitriona Cahir, a researcher at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, who led the study said the reasons why the medications appeared to have been inappropriately prescribed ranged from the fact some patients were on higher doses of drugs such as digoxin than would normally be recommended and some were on protein pump inhibitors, which are used to prevent symptoms such as gastro-intestinal bleeding, for longer than would be expected.
She stressed, however, that the patients who got these drugs had not been looked at to see the effect the medications had on them or to see if there were specific reasons why the potentially inappropriate medications had been prescribed for them. This will form a second phase of the research project, which is being funded by the Health Research Board. How we compare with Northern Ireland and Scotland will also be looked at.
Ms Cahir said there would be valid reasons why some patients needed the drugs they were prescribed but perhaps their medications needed to be reviewed more regularly, considering the savings that could be made. “These are savings that you could make without having a detrimental effect on the patient.”
The research was presented in Dublin yesterday at the annual scientific meeting of the Association of University Departments of General Practice in Ireland.
A separate study looked at medication use in early pregnancy among about 60,000 women booking to deliver at the Coombe Women’s Hospital in Dublin between 2000 and 2007. It found four in 10 women reported taking medication other than folic acid, which is recommended in the first trimester of pregnancy and one in five reported taking an over-the-counter medicine during this time.
Brian Cleary, a research pharmacist at the hospital who led the study, said this was a relatively high rate of medication use in early pregnancy.
Women, he said, need to seek appropriate medical advice from their doctor before they take any medication during pregnancy.