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Are Older Adults with Diabetes at Increased Risk of Inappropriate Prescriptions?
A study in the online Diabetic Medicine suggests that older adults with diabetes are more likely to receive potentially erroneous prescriptions than older adults without the condition.
“Inappropriate prescribing is higher in older patients with diabetes, even when diabetes-related treatment is excluded from the inappropriate prescribing evaluation,” concluded a group of researchers investigating potentially inappropriate prescribing in Spain.
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The study examined prescriptions received by 672 adults ≥75 years of age 1 month prior to their hospitalization. Some 249 had diabetes. Researchers assessed inappropriate prescribing in the population using 4 tools: The Beers Criteria, the Screening Tool of Older Persons’ Prescriptions (STOPP) criteria, the Screening Tool to Alert Doctors to Right Treatment (START) criteria, and the Assessing Care of Vulnerable Elders (ACOVE-3) medicine quality indicators.
Among older adults with diabetes, 68.1% had at least 1 potentially inappropriate medicine per STOPP criteria, and 54.5% had at least 1 potentially inappropriate medicine per Beers Criteria. The rate of at least 1 potential prescribing omission in patients with diabetes was 64.6% per START criteria and 62.8% per ACOVE-3 indicators.
“Except for the Beers criteria, these prevalences were significantly higher in patients with diabetes than in those without,” researchers wrote.
Even after excluding diabetes medications from the comparison, potentially inappropriate medicines were still significantly higher among patients with diabetes per STOPP criteria.
Older adults with diabetes averaged 12.6 prescriptions each, according to the study, compared with an average 9.4 prescriptions in older adults without diabetes.—Jolynn Tumolo
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