Click this link for the chart of potentially inappropriate medications, their therapeutic alternatives, and medications to consider initiating in the elderly that incorporates the STOPP and START criteria. Use these lists to identify red flags that might require intervention, not as the final word on medication appropriateness; look at the total patient picture.

Some current strategies available to address this complex issue include “START” (Screening Tool to Alert doctors to the Right Treatment) and “STOPP” (Screening Tool of Older Person’s potentially inappropriate Prescriptions) criteria.  Read the entire article here.

Patients, physicians and pharmacists can work together to help prevent theproblems that might occur if an older adult is taking several medications.

(CBSNews) Problems with taking multiple drugs are not limited to drug abusers. In the last 10 years, the percentage of people over 60 who take five or more medications has jumped from 22 percent to 37 percent. CBS News medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook looks into the risks.

"Medical treatment of elderly people is not working. Worse, it is often harmful", says author Dr. John Sloan, a family physician who has worked primarily with the elderly for more than twenty years. In A Bitter Pill, he examines why medical treatment from modern medicine’s one-size-fits-all prevention strategy to hospital stays that don’t benefit anyone is failing them and identifies solutions to the problem.