‘Bag of Pills’: Is It Necessary? Fewer medications is an achievable goal
May 10, 2016MedPage Today by Joyce Frieden News Editor, MedPage Today WASHINGTON — Polypharmacy is a difficult problem for many physicians who treat older patients, but there are steps they can take to cut down on their patients’ medications,Amit Shah, MD, said here at the American College of Physicians annual meeting.
“I do a lot of medical student and resident teaching, and whenever I teach this topic, I like to say, ‘As a geriatrician, I have cured more disease by stopping medications than starting them,'” said Shah, who is at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz. “It’s a bit of an overstatement but it gets people’s attention” because they never thought about fixing problems by taking medications away rather than adding things on.” Read More