Management of elderly patients with polypharmacy

Annette Kurrle, MD, is a geriatric coordinator at Community Hospital Mittelrhein in Germany, scientific associate at the University of Mainz, and member of the European Federation of Internal Medicine Multimorbidity Working Group.

What would you advise to physicians who treat elderly patients with polypharmacy?

Annette Kurrle, MD: Elderly patients are vulnerable patients. The situation of the disease can change from one point to another, from one moment to another. Everybody who treats elderly people must be aware of this. And for the polypharmacy of these elderly people, it is necessary to have the reactions to polypharmacy in view to pay attention to all the reactions of the patient coming after prescribing or after deprescribing. And it is necessary to see polypharmacy as a changing and continuously adaptation-needing process and be aware of that.