Every year, approximately 35,000 seniors are admitted to hospital due to conditions caused in whole or in part by drug side effects, reports the newspaper Senioren. There may therefore be good reason to keep an eye on the list that the National Board of Health and Welfare draws up of medicine that can cause a particularly high risk of side effects in older people.
For those who do take these medications, there are some important things to keep in mind.
- The preparations should only be used if there are special reasons for it.
- There must be a well-founded and current reason for using the medicine and the doctor must have assessed that the expected benefit of the medicine is in reasonable proportion to the risks.
- The treatment should be followed up and reassessed regularly at frequent intervals.
Aware of the risks
– The list should not be seen as a ban. But if you are prescribed a drug from it, you should be aware that there are certain risks and that the benefit must, according to the doctor’s judgment, outweigh the risks, says Johan Fastbom who is a professor of geriatric pharmacology at the Karolinska Institute and a medical expert at the National Board of Health and Welfare to Senioren.
He advises seniors who receive drugs from the list prescribed by doctors to ask if one really needs such drug treatment and why.
– Then you should ask if there is another corresponding drug that is not on the list. If it does, you should ask to have that medicine prescribed instead, says Johan Fastbom to the newspaper.
