Background
Healthcare professionals are often reluctant to deprescribe fall-risk-increasing drugs (FRIDs). Lack of knowledge and skills form a significant barrier and furthermore, there is no consensus on which medications are considered as FRIDs despite several systematic reviews. To support clinicians in the management of FRIDs and to facilitate the deprescribing process, STOPPFall (Screening Tool of Older Persons Prescriptions in older adults with high fall risk) and a deprescribing tool were developed by a European expert group.
Methods
STOPPFall was created by two facilitators based on evidence from recent meta-analyses and national fall prevention guidelines in Europe. Twenty-four panellists chose their level of agreement on a Likert scale with the items in the STOPPFall in three Delphi panel rounds. A threshold of 70% was selected for consensus a priori. The panellists were asked whether some agents are more fall-risk-increasing than others within the same pharmacological class. In an additional questionnaire, panellists were asked in which cases deprescribing of FRIDs should be considered and how it should be performed.
Results
The panellists agreed on 14 medication classes to be included in the STOPPFall. They were mostly psychotropic medications. The panellists indicated 18 differences between pharmacological subclasses with regard to fall-risk-increasing properties. Practical deprescribing guidance was developed for STOPPFall medication classes.
Conclusion
STOPPFall was created using an expert Delphi consensus process and combined with a practical deprescribing tool designed to optimise medication review. The effectiveness of these tools in falls prevention should be further evaluated in intervention studies.
Objective
Explicit screening tools and implicit evaluation methods have been developed to assist healthcare professionals in the management of pharmacotherapy in older adults. As prescribing habits and locally available medications vary considerably between countries, guides tailored to the needs of specific regions may be required. We aimed to report the results of the international Delphi validation study for the Turkish Inappropriate Medication use in the Elderly (TIME) criteria set, which aims to detect inappropriate prescribing in older adults in Eastern Europe.
Methods
The study was conducted between June 2019 and March 2020. Delphi rounds were conducted by the TIME international working group, which included 11 internationally recognized experts in geriatric pharmacotherapy as Delphi panelists. They were asked to indicate to what extent they agreed or disagreed with each TIME criterion, taking into account both the available evidence and their own experience. We used a five-point Likert scale from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree) and an online software program (SurveyMonkey
®
) to grade the level of agreement. Criteria with a median value of 1 or 2 and a 75th centile value of 1 or 2 were accepted, and criteria with a median value > 2 were rejected. Those with a median value of 1 or 2 but a 75th centile value > 2 were retained, to be assessed in the following round. The initial list of Delphi criteria comprised 153 TIME items.
Results
After three Delphi rounds, 134 criteria were accepted and seven criteria were rejected, while 12 criteria did not achieve consensus, and so were not included in the final validated set of TIME criteria.
Conclusion
We developed the internationally validated TIME criteria set based on a Delphi process involving international experts. The validation study suggests that the TIME criteria set can be applied in both central and Eastern European settings. Further studies are needed to assess the utility and benefit of the TIME criteria in reducing inappropriate drug use and improving clinical outcomes.
Supplementary Information
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40266-021-00855-5.
AimThe aim of our study was to assess barriers and facilitators to CDSS use reported by European physicians treating older fallers and explore differences in their perceptions. Findings Our main findings were that a barrier to CDSS use is that physicians feel that complex geriatric patients need a physician's clinical judgement and not the advice of a CDSS. Regional differences in barrier and facilitator perceptions occurred across Europe. Message Our main message is that when designing a CDSS for Geriatric falls patients, the patient's medical complexity must be addressed whilst maintaining the doctor's decision-making autonomy, and to increase successful CDSS implementation in Europe, regional differences in barrier perception should be overcome.
the results demonstrate that low SBP is associated with adverse events, it is possible that the pursuit of BP control at a population level may lead to over-treatment in certain groups of patients. This may result in an increased incidence of adverse events particularly in older people.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.