Results of the use of a trigger list to detect drug-related problems at the emergency room in older polypharmacy patients

A lot of elderly (age 70 and up) are using multiple kinds of medication on a chronic basis, which can all come with side effects. Those side effects can lead to a visit to the Emergency Room (ER). Sometimes these side effects are not recognised as such. Therefore the underlying cause, the side effect of the medication, remains unsolved, which can lead to recurrence of the issue. It can even cause permanent damage for the patient, i.e. fractures in reoccurring falling or even increase in mortality in elderly. It has a major impact not only on the patient, the family and potential informal carer, but on society as well.
To improve the recognition of side effects, a multidisciplinary team in older polypharmacy patients has developed a trigger list of visits to the ER potentially caused by drug use by elderly. The trigger list has been optimised by members of the project team and this improved version will be used for this study in the following hospitals in the Netherlands: Catharina Ziekenhuis Eindhoven (CZE), Canisius Wilhelmina Ziekenhuis (CWZ) and Universitair Medisch Centrum Utrecht (UMCU). The objective of this prospective study is to identify what triggers occur and how frequently they occur. Data are obtained from patient file research.

It is expected that the current triggers of the list will be the most common and most important triggers. Considering the estimated frequency from earlier studies, the triggers will be present in 5,6% of the people over 70 with polypharmacy.

inclusion in a two-month period, after inclusion period analysis of the data

Not applicable