Elderly people often have more than one health condition requiring multiple medications. Do some drugs do more harm than good?
One of the most important issues for elderly patients is the high likelihood of developing heart disease. If a patient's new drug therapy has additional side effects-fluid overload, difficulties with heart function, abnormal heart rhythms, anemia-this can be devastating for someone who has a prior heart condition. Now that we have more successful therapies for a variety of medical problems and patients are living longer, it is common to see people who have more than one cancer or more than one medical condition at the same time in their seventies and eighties, so watching out for these problems is important.
It is often harder for elderly patients to get around. What problems does this pose?
Many of my older patients are living alone, and even getting your prescriptions can be much more complex for someone who isn't driving regularly or getting about easily. It's also often necessary for the patient to come back and forth for frequent testing, in order to make judgments about proper dosages of medicine. Often that's much tougher for elderly people, and these difficulties should be considered when making decisions about which therapy is best for an individual patient.
