Inappropriate Medication and Perception of Quality of Life in Hospitalized Elderly Patients

Older or elderly adults represent a population exposed to potentially inappropriate prescriptions, since medication is the most widely used intervention. The objective of this work is to analyze the type of medication schemes of the elderly and the relationship with their states of psychological well-being. It is a cross-sectional study. Results: inappropriate prescription is of the order of 16% and the perception of quality of life was 56.8, finding an association between inappropriate prescription and perception of quality of life. Conclusions: The results showed that inappropriate prescription is highly frequent in these patients and that psychological well-being states would be related to this inappropriate prescription.

Pain Management in Older Persons

Pain is a common symptom in the elderly and it is problematic and distressful especially if the polder person is dependent on a caregiver. Pain keeps the sufferer uncomfortable and can affect the person from carrying out daily activities and tasks especially activities of daily living. Pain in the older person may be acute or chronic. Some of the causes of pain in the elderly are neuralgia, musculoskeletal dysfunction especially osteoarthritis, emotional and mental problems, cancer and several other causes. The assessment of pain in the elderly is done using validated pain assessment tools such as the visual analogue scale, verbal rating scales, numeric rating scales, McGill pain assessment questionnaire, pain attitudes, brief pain inventory, and geriatric pain measure. Management of pain in older persons involves non-pharmacological and pharmacological methods. There are some barriers and challenges of pain management in the elderly and also consequences when pain is not properly managed or not managed at all in an older person.