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Category: Project

Description: The prevalence of inappropriate prescribing and polypharmacy among the older adults are well documented and known to contribute to substantial proportions of adverse events, healthcare utilisation, poor quality of life and cost to the health system. Older adults with life-limiting illnesses and limited life expectancy are even more vulnerable to these outcomes because of the change in their body physiology due to both ageing and the disease. Hence, medicines which were once beneficial for disease prevention can become less relevant or incur more risk. But evidence suggest that they continue to receive such potentially inappropriate medicines, even at the end-of-life. Consequently, it would be more appropriate to withdraw such medicines under the supervision of health care professionals, a process called deprescribing. By contrast, scarce information is available about the impact of deprescribing of inappropriate medications on the wellbeing of people in the last year of life. In particular, deprescribing of dual-purpose medications i.e. used for prevention and treatment of chronic conditions, have not been widely reported for this specific vulnerable group of population. This review aims to fill this knowledge gap by synthesising information on effectiveness levels and benefits of randomised and non-randomised interventions.