Older adults require special care and consideration when prescribing medications. Older adults often receive multiple drugs for multiple diseases. This greatly increases the risk of drug interactions as well as adverse reactions, and may affect compliance. The balance of benefit and harm of some medicines may be altered in older adults. Therefore, medicines should be reviewed regularly and medicines stopped when not clearly beneficial. Always balance the potential harm and benefits of any medicine. Also, non-pharmacological measures may be more appropriate in many situations.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original article at https://patient.info/doctor/drug-therapy/prescribing-for-the-older-patient