ash wrote:
why are these drugs listed specifically only contraindicated in veterans and their spouses ?
The study looked at drugs generally regarded as contraindicated in the elderly because they pose unnecessarily high risk of adverse events for older persons and safer alternatives are available. The criteria used to select the drugs are given in the appended references.
The Veterans database was used because it contains details of all medicines dispensed on the RPBS system and also can be linked to age, sex and other details. This enabled the researchers to look at drugs dispensed to Veterans 70 years or older.
So, there was nothing specific about veterans and their spouses; they were just a convenient sample of elderly people whose prescribing data was readily available.
Cheers Ken -- Dr. Ken Harvey Adjunct Senior Research Fellow School of Public Health, La Trobe University http://www.medreach.com.au VOIP: +61 (03) 9029 0634; Mobile +61 (04) 1918 1910 References: Fick DM, Cooper JW, Wade WE, Waller JL, Maclean JR, Beers MH. Updating the Beers criteria for potentially inappropriate medication use in older adults. Arch Intern Med 2003; 163: 2716–24. & McLeod PJ, Huang AR, Tamblyn RM, Gayton DC. Defining inappropriate practices in prescribing for elderly people: a national consensus panel. Can Med Assoc J 1997; 156: 385, 387. _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
