Joint effects of advancing age and number of potentially inappropriate medication classes on risk of falls in Medicare enrollees.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Injurious falls among older adults are both common and costly. The prevalence of falls is known to increase with age and with use of fall-risk drugs/potentially inappropriate medications (FRD/PIM). Little is known about the joint effects of these two risk factors.

Methods

Data for 2013-2015 were obtained from the Truven Health MarketScan® Medicare database comprising utilization and eligibility (enrollment) data for approximately 4 million enrollees annually. A case-control design was used to compare enrollees aged 65-99 years diagnosed with > 1 fall event (n = 110,625) with enrollees without falls (n = 1,567,412). An exploratory analysis of joint age-FRD/PIM effects on fall risks was based on number needed to harm (NNH) calculations for each FRD/PIM therapy class

SUBMITTER: Early NK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6642496 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature