Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-29-2021
Abstract
The care of older patients with cancer is becoming increasingly complex. Common challenges for this population include management of comorbidities, safe transitions of care, and appropriate medication use. In particular, polypharmacy-generally defined as the regular use of five or more medications-and inappropriate medication use can lead to adverse effects and poor outcomes in older adults with cancer, including falls, hospital readmissions, cognitive impairment, poor adherence to essential medications, chemotherapy toxicity, and increased mortality. Managing polypharmacy across different cancer care settings is often challenging. Providers face barriers to safe and successful medication management that may include lack of time, absence of reimbursement, underappreciation of the scale of polypharmacy-related harm, lack of ownership of deprescribing efforts, and poor communication across care settings. Existing literature on managing inappropriate medication use and polypharmacy in older adults with cancer has often focused on ideal state settings in which resources are plentiful and time is purposefully allocated for medication interventions. This paper presents a narrative, rather than a systematic review, of studies published in the past decade that provided detailed information on medication management and polypharmacy across cancer care settings. This review aims to also summarize different healthcare provider roles in taking action against inappropriate medication use and polypharmacy in older adults with cancer.
Recommended Citation
Whitman, Andrew; Erdeljac, Paige; Jones, Caroline; Pillarella, Nicole; and Nightingale, Ginah PharmD, BCOP, "Managing Polypharmacy in Older Adults with Cancer Across Different Healthcare Settings." (2021). College of Pharmacy Faculty Papers. Paper 46.
https://jdc.jefferson.edu/pharmacyfp/46
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License
PubMed ID
33953612
Language
English
Comments
This article is the author's final published version in Drug, Healthcare and Patient Safety, Volume 13, Pages 101-116.
Drug, Healthcare and Patient Safety, published by Dove Medical Press, was the original place of publication for this article. The published version is available at https://doi.org/10.2147/DHPS.S255893
Copyright © 2021 Whitman et al.
This work is published and licensed by Dove Medical Press Limited. The full terms of this license are available at https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php and incorporate the Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial (unported, v3.0) License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/). By accessing the work you hereby accept the Terms. Non-commercial uses of the work are permitted without any further permission from Dove Medical Press Limited, provided the work is properly attributed. For permission for commercial use of this work, please see paragraphs 4.2 and 5 of our Terms (https://www.dovepress.com/terms.php).