#32 Pharmacovigilance in older adults – Giovanni Furlan

Medication-related-harm (MRH) is especially prevalent in older
adults due to changing physiology as the body ages, increased
frailty, and the incidence of polypharmacy in this patient group.
Giovanni Furlan, Worldwide Safety Site Lead for Thessaloniki of
Pfizer discusses what makes this patient group so vulnerable to
adverse drug reactions, how poor representation and using age
alone to define older adults exacerbates this problem, and
suggests ways forward in monitoring drug safety in older
patients.


 Tune in to find out:


What makes older adults especially at risk of experiencing
adverse drug reactions and medication errors

Why frailty is far more useful than age in predicting adverse
drug reaction risk

How pharmacovigilance in older patients may be improved
through pharmaceutical practice and better representation in
clinical trials.




Want to know more?


This interview all started with Giovanni's Uppsala Reports
article on how age is insufficient a measure of adverse event
risk. Read it here.
For a summary of the key points discussed in this
interview, read Giovanni’s paper on the status of drug safety in
geriatric patients.


If our discussion of frailty piqued your interest, read this
paper on the biology of frailty and how this impacts clinical
pharmacology, this multi-centre cohort study that shows frailty
is significantly correlated with MRH, and this commentary
advocating for consideration of MRH as a geriatric syndrome,
which needs to be managed as such.

As Giovanni mentioned in the interview, Harlan Krumholz was the
first to describe post-hospital syndrome. Learn more about this
syndrome by reading his paper.


For more on prescribing cascades, their prevention, detection,
and reversal, read this paper by Brath and colleagues.





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