A new study in the Canadian province of Ontario has measured how common 'prescribing cascades' are in the general population: one drug is added to deal with another's side effect, then another for that one, and so on. Professor Dr Mohammad Saifullah, head of cardiology at Shahabuddin Medical College in Gulshan, Dhaka, discussed it on Amar Desh's health page.
Researchers first identified 65 potentially risky drug-use patterns based on expert opinion, then analysed prescription records in Ontario's health databases to see how often those combinations actually occur. They found 24 common and potentially harmful prescribing patterns.
With age, he writes, people are more likely to have several long-term conditions at once, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease and arthritis, and so need several medicines. That is where unintended side effects and complications arise.
His advice to doctors is to review regularly whether a long-term medicine is still needed, to consider lowering the dose, switching or stopping under supervision when risks outweigh benefits, and to look for the cause of a new symptom before adding another drug, especially in older patients.
To patients he says: never stop, change or adjust a prescribed medicine without a doctor's advice. Keep an up-to-date list of what you take, since when and why, and show it to your doctor or pharmacist. If a new symptom appears after starting a medicine, check first whether it is a side effect of something you already take.
The article is from Amar Desh's health page; the views are the writer's own.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: Amar Desh
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