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The adverse drug reaction risk in older persons (ADRROP) prediction scale: derivation and prospective validation of an ADR risk assessment tool in older multi-morbid patients

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Abstract

Background

Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) cause serious morbidity and mortality in multi-morbid older adults. Reliable ADR risk prediction would improve patient safety in this at-risk population. We aimed to derive and validate a new predictive tool for assessing ADR Risk in Older People (acronym ADRROP).

Design

We combined four databases describing 2217 older people hospitalized with acute illness in order to determine risk factor variables significantly associated with ADRs. We identified the independent ADR risk factors from 1687 patients (derivation cohort) and used them to construct the ADRROP scale. We prospectively validated ADRROP using data from 530 patients (validation cohort). We applied area under the curve (AUC) analysis to test ADRROP’s ADR predictive power. We also compared ADRROP’s performance to the GerontoNet ADR risk scale.

Results

Eight independent ADR risk factors were identified in the derivation patient cohort: female gender, age > 70 years, estimated GFR < 30 ml/min/1.73 m2, assistance required for ≥ 1 daily activity, ≥ 4 co-morbidities, liver disease, presence and number of STOPP criteria-defined potentially inappropriate medications, and ≥ 1 fall in the previous year. The ADRROP predictive scale constructed from these combined variables ranged from 0 to 27. The derivation cohort AUC value was 0.623 (95% CI 0.598–0.665); the validation cohort AUC was 0.592 (95% CI 0.532–0.652). Applying the GerontoNet ADR risk scale to the combined cohorts yielded an AUC of 0.566 (95% CI 0.537–0.596).

Conclusions and relevance

Neither ADRROP nor the GerontoNet ADR risk scale predicted ADRs to a high level in hospitalized older people with multi-morbidity.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the SENATOR Project, funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme (Grant Number 305930) and the Health Research Board of Ireland (Grant Number HRA_HSR/2010/14). The assistance of Dr. Darren Dahly, PhD, of the University College Cork Clinical Research Facility with the statistical analysis of the data is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine (Geriatrics), University College Cork, Cork University Hospital, Wilton, Cork, T12 DC4A, Ireland

    Denis O’Mahony & Paul Gallagher

  2. Clinical Research Facility, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

    Joseph Eustace

  3. School of Pharmacy, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

    Stephen Byrne

  4. Department of Internal Medicine (Geriatrics), Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Mirko Petrovic

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  1. Denis O’Mahony
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  2. Marie Noelle O’Connor
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Correspondence to Denis O’Mahony.

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Conflict of interest

None of the authors reports a conflict of interest in relation to this manuscript.

Ethical approval

Each of the 4 studies whose data constituted the database for the present study received approval from the Cork University Hospitals research ethics committee.

Informed consent

Each of the 4 ethically approved studies collected data on the basis of written informed consent from patients or their next-of-kin.

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O’Mahony, D., O’Connor, M.N., Eustace, J. et al. The adverse drug reaction risk in older persons (ADRROP) prediction scale: derivation and prospective validation of an ADR risk assessment tool in older multi-morbid patients. Eur Geriatr Med 9, 191–199 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41999-018-0030-x

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