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Medication Management

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Geriatrics for Specialists

Abstract

Optimizing medication management is often a major challenge for clinicians caring for older persons. Age-related changes in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, the large number of co-occurring chronic diseases, and consequent polypharmacy lead to prescribing challenges. To minimize adverse medication events, address polypharmacy, and improve medication management when caring for older patients, several tactics and resources will be discussed. These include pharmacist-directed services; clinical resources to address potentially inappropriate medication use and medication underuse, namely, the American Geriatrics Society (AGS) Beer’s Criteria, Screening Tool of Older Person’s Prescriptions (STOPP), Screening Tool to Alert to Right Treatment (START), and US Fit fOR The Aged (US-FORTA); principles for managing older adults with multimorbidity; as well as principles of deprescribing.

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Brandt, N.J., Levy, H.B. (2021). Medication Management. In: Lee, A.G., Potter, J.F., Harper, G.M. (eds) Geriatrics for Specialists. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76271-1_5

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