Proper dosage?

No doubt, modern medications have improved the lives of many senior citizens, yet others are plagued by problems in dosages and improper mixing of medicines.

The right combination of the wrong drugs can mean serious side effects for seniors. Sometimes, even the right drug in the wrong patient can be a problem.

Patients and their families need to go beyond the doctor’s office to find out the proper doses and combinations to keep health issues at bay.

“In hospitals, there’s a tendency to overmedicate the elderly,” says Dr. Patricia Harris, director of geriatric education with the Washington Hospital Center in Northwest. “Some [patients] overmedicate themselves with over-the-counter medicine.”

Geriatric experts agree the problem is significant and overwhelming in its complexities.

Dr. Harris says the average person is not well-versed on the aging process, and doctors must deal with an avalanche of material when treating older patients.

Take the recent arrival of the insomnia drug Ambien into the marketplace.

“It was marketed as the perfect medication for older people,” Dr. Harris says. “It wasn’t until it got into the population as a whole that the problems crept up.”

Potential side effects in elderly patients taking Ambien include amnesia, she says.

Dr. Neil Resnick, chief of the division of geriatric medicine and professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, says the good news is that drug companies “are figuring out better and more effective drugs” all the time.

The Food and Drug Administration tries to ensure that each of these drugs isn’t harmful, but the research isn’t sufficient to identify some problems when older people take them, Dr. Resnick says.

A person’s age affects how a drug is absorbed or excreted in the body, he says.

Though companies have begun using older people in their research, the people used often don’t accurately reflect the kind of patients who may end up taking the drug.

“On average, older people have several chronic, coexisting conditions for which they take other medications,” Dr. Resnick says. “As a result, when the drug is approved, there’s very little knowledge as to how that drug will work when given to a 75-year-old person taking eight to 10 other drugs.”

Doctors often are helpless in trying to avoid drug conflicts with their patients, even if they diligently track every medication and known side effect their patients could experience.

Story Continues →